2. Morphogenesis and Urban Change in Newcastle upon Tyne: Context and Process

The principal theme of this paper is concerned with morphological processes and, perhaps contentiously, with what the author regards as their relative neglect. It is important to clarify that the word ‘process’ is used here in the broadest sense and is concerned with the transmission of ideas as well as tangible physical outcomes. The study is mainly concerned with the west end of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and in terms of its academic provenance it is based firmly in the historico-geographical tradition in urban morphology. Urban morphologists will need no reminder that Newcastle upon Tyne was the location of seminal morphological research by Conzen and Whitehand and therefore the comments made here should resonate in a variety of ways.

In the context of a study of process, it is useful to start with one word—morphogenesis. Curiously, this is a word that is familiar to all urban morphologists but which on further analysis seems to be remarkably underused. For example, a simple content analysis of the titles and keywords in main papers and viewpoint articles in the journal Urban Morphology from 1997 to 2021 (49 issues in total; 183 main articles, and 203 viewpoints) shows limited usage (Table 22.1). This is an arguably imperfect measure but the relative paucity of occurrence of the word in this volume of titles and keywords is both surprising and informative.

The specific concern about this relative absence is that the words ‘morphogenesis’ and ‘morphogenetic’ are essentially about process. The central message of this paper is to make a plea for a more direct consideration of ‘process’ in the field of urban morphology. By ‘process’ I mean something that causes certain phenomena to come about and/or to change. Urban morphology is very good at pattern recognition and, indeed, there exists a quite sophisticated ‘tool kit’ (or several ‘tool kits’) to recognise and describe morphological patterns and morphological components but it is possible to argue that less direct overt attention has been given to process. The argument developed here is that we need more studies of process understood as a dynamic set of forces—things that explain why things happen or happened in a specific way. Of course, the word ‘process’ does appear in many studies but sometimes what is presented as process is simply a description of a sequence of patterns at different stages, or sometimes little more than an account of the context within which change takes place.

A widely cited example concerns Conzen’s work on mediaeval Newcastle upon Tyne (1962) but what follows is a small but important extension of this. It concerns the area of East Pilgrim Street where Conzen exemplified the burgage cycle (Fig. 2.1). However, an important issue concerns the process under which this burgage series emerged, something that Conzen didn’t really consider. However, the eminent urban historian Maurice Beresford (1967) was in no doubt—‘the basic street pattern north of the Castle (i.e. including this area of Pilgrim Street) bears evidence of Norman ‘new borough’ planning’. In other words, the ‘process’ was effectively a central planning directive. But, on closer examination, this seems unlikely. In fact, it is possible to identify four phases of development (from the eleventh century to the thirteenth century) in this burgage series (Fig. 2.2). The identification is based on a combination of form (morphological) detail and archaeological evidence (Graves and Heslop 2013, p. 132). The burgage plots shown as A-B developed first, there was then a later extension northwards of nine plots, wider and deeper than the first; plots C-D were clearly much narrower and had a slightly different alignment; finally, plots D-E were much narrower and shorter.

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Conzen’s purpose was much more concerned with what happened to the burgage plots after their formation (that is, the burgage cycle) and, understandably, he didn’t really consider the process of their formation. But the latter is important and the distinction between a ‘planned’ series and an organically emerging one is fundamental. The process here was not the one, single decision to lay out an overall template for this part of Newcastle upon Tyne, it was a much more piecemeal set of decisions made over the course of a couple of hundred years, that is, a process of organic growth.

Some recent developments in Newcastle upon Tyne have reinforced the importance of considering the processes of morphological change and how, in contemporary urban areas, these may relate also to the challenges of a neo-liberal era (or possibly a post neo-liberal era) when traditional conceptions, terminology and categorisations are less appropriate than formerly (especially in this context of ‘process’).

Intriguingly, the developments that have stimulated this concern and, more broadly, some disquiet about how we approach ‘process’ in urban morphology are concerned with two iconic sites in Newcastle, frequently cited as representative of ‘classical’ urban morphological phenomena. One we have looked at already and concerns the series of burgage plots on Pilgrim St. in the city centre. The second concerns a segment of the Outer Fringe Belt in the north of the city (Fig. 2.3). The former was studied by Conzen (1962) and the latter by Whitehand (1967). But what is of considerable interest in this context of contemporary processes is that these two sites have become linked.

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The East Pilgrim Street burgage plots have clearly passed through their full cycle (Fig. 2.4), reaching the phase of urban fallow, and are now in the process of wholescale development. The photograph is taken looking at the back of East Pilgrim St. which runs across the top of the photograph and the burgage plots ran from left to right, down the slope. It is immediately apparent that a significant component of Newcastle upon Tyne’s mediaeval morphological heritage is being lost at the present time. Indeed, it has been calculated that only 8% of Newcastle’s historic burgage plots actually remain (Graves and Heslop 2013). It is the case that, in terms of commercial viability, East Pilgrim Street has been problematic for many years, with a lengthening history of poor property maintenance and a growing volume of empty property, apparently signalling to many that the area was ripe for clearance. However, in terms of what is happening in this area now, that is, the contemporary process—this site is now linked to a significant section of Newcastle’s northern Outer Fringe Belt (Fig. 2.3). This area developed south of the fixation line of the railway to the coast, consisting of a series of institutional and sport-related land uses including a convent with associated school, a golf course, the Freeman Hospital site and, more significantly, a very large area of Government Department offices, known locally as the ‘Ministry’. Although initiated in the 1930s this Outer Fringe Belt area consolidated mainly in the post Second World War period. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the ‘Ministry’ and Freeman Hospital have progressively intensified investment and buildings on their sites.

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However, in accelerating pursuit of a neo-liberal agenda, successive Governments have been keen to reduce costs and/or increase revenue from their assets. The principal way of doing this in such sites is, of course, to capitalise on the value of land—a process that famously began in the Thatcher years with schools being encouraged to sell off their playing fields and health institutions their green open spaces. This process has been accelerated by recent Governments with sites increasingly colonised for residential developments (Fig. 2.5). Indeed, the ‘nibbling away’ at such sites has been replaced by ‘gobbling’! Institutions and government departments have for some time been engaged in re-appraising the use value of their ‘estate’, that is, the land they own and, in the context of declining support from Central Government funds, have sought to use their land to generate finance. But this, of course, is a ‘one off’ source of income generation. In fact, this ‘Ministry’ site is to be closed and sold off to residential developers, a process that is already under way. However, the linkage to the East Pilgrim Street site described earlier is that, to justify the comprehensive redevelopment of the city centre site, the functions of the Government Departments, formerly located on the Outer Fringe Belt site, are to be transferred to East Pilgrim Street, to the site of the previous burgage series.

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This example of abrupt morphological transformation, and a more detailed historical example to be discussed shortly, relates to observations made by Larkham (1999) on the concept of ‘evolution’ in urban morphological studies. The article identifies important differences (in outcomes but also in terms of process) between the traditional, ‘gradualist’ view of evolution and a situation where long periods of only minor change are followed by short bursts of extremely rapid change. The case of East Pilgrim Street and the northern Outer Fringe Belt is clearly an example of the latter case of rapid change. The key question, of course, is what causes this rapid change? In similar vein, amongst other things, Kropf (2001) in a paper on ‘conceptions of change’ pointed out the significance of ‘agency’ as a process—‘Changes do not occur of their own accord. Building types do not just change, people change them’ (pp. 33–4). However, the example discussed above shows that it is not just ‘people’ as individuals who have agency, so do organisations.

An extensive reading of the literature, together with the empirical evidence on the paucity with which terms such as morphogenesis are used only reinforces the view that the consideration of causative processes in urban morphology lags somewhat behind the consideration of form. In the conviction that process can often be more clearly discerned in the examination of historical examples, attention will now be turned to the morphological development and change in the west end of Newcastle upon Tyne. In this examination, a further theme will be developed, namely, the conviction that the study of the processes of morphological change requires the examination of the impact of previous forms upon subsequent ones but also the existence of ideas and concepts of how urban form should be shaped at a particular period of time in a particular place will also impact on subsequent ideas and concepts.

Given their significance in terms of scale and their overall contribution to the urban landscape, there are remarkably few morphological studies of industrial landscapes although exceptions include Conzen (1978) and Mortimore (1969). Local urban histories provide useful information but are usually divorced from a conceptual framework that would facilitate more general comparisons. Perhaps it is no surprise therefore that, historically, and in the recent past, the west end of Newcastle upon Tyne has been perceived as an archetypical industrial suburb (Fig. 2.6). Like similar areas, most accounts of the development of the area follow a fairly simple sequence. For example, Smailes (1960) observes ‘Since most of the new employment that was responsible for crowding workers on Tyneside was provided alongside the river itself, the spread of housing to north and south was limited compared to lateral extension…’ and, significantly, Middlebrook (1950) notes ‘…the vast expansion of the suburbs most impressed contemporaries. The overspill westwards into Elswick and Westgate … was mainly by artisans who had to (my emphasis) live near the shipyards and engineering shops along the river…’. The implied sequence therefore is that industry grew westwards along the river, creating substantial employment. The workers clearly demanded housing accommodation which was readily supplied. The reality was not like this at all. In fact, for a large part of the later nineteenth century there was a considerable mismatch of employment growth and housing provision (Benwell Community Development Project, 1978c). Table 2.2 shows the expansion of employment at Armstrong’s massive Elswick works, by far the largest employer in the area. Particular noteworthy is the growth of employment between 1851 and 1863, a period in which there was hardly any house building in the locality. The major spurt in house building was in the 1880s by which time over 12,000 people worked at Armstrong’s Elswick works.

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The conventional accounts of the development of Newcastle’s western industrial suburbs do not therefore relate to the actual sequence of events. In particular, the timing of residential growth actually related to a complex of factors, other than the simple demand for worker’s housing. Foremost amongst these was a growing concern about labour relations. Whilst it may seem slightly odd to give prominence to the topic of industrial relations in an article concerned with morphogenetic processes, this factor does relate directly to the context and process of development of Newcastle’s west end. An event that was central to this was the so-called Engineer’s Strike of 1871 (Allen et al. 1971), ostensibly principally about securing a 9-h working day. Employers, led by Armstrong, opposed this, but after a bitter confrontation, lasting 20 weeks, eventually gave way, perhaps the most significant victory for organised labour on Tyneside up to this point. It is no coincidence that, subsequently through the 1870s, a series of charitable bequests from industrialists in the building of schools, public baths, libraries, public parks and—for some—better housing (Barke 1977; Benwell Community Development Project 1978a) took place. Such social concessions represented an attempt to mollify the new-found militancy and confidence of organised labour within the region. The large-scale development and built form of the west end of Newcastle was significantly affected by these processes.

However, we need to dig a little deeper in search of a comprehensive account of the development of this area. The fortunes of the west end had also been profoundly impacted by the failure of an earlier and entirely different development scheme, one initiated by the entrepreneur and developer Richard Grainger (Green 2016). In fact, this proved to be a significant factor in the delay in provision of working-class accommodation in the area, despite an unquestionable demand.

It is important to understand that Grainger was the person principally responsible for the much-lauded large-scale development of Newcastle’s city centre in the later 1830s (Wilkes and Dodds 1964). It was on the basis of this work that he turned attention to the West End. In January 1839, he purchased the Elswick Estate from John Hodgson Hinde for the then considerable sum of £114,100. It appears that he borrowed virtually all of this sum from various banks and creditors. He saw this as ‘yet another opportunity to acquire building ground’ (Wilkes and Dodds 1964: 104). In effect, his intentions were to carry on with large-scale development, but this time creating a residential area in the northern section and a riverside industrial and commercial zone. Grainger moved into Elswick Hall and development started in the early 1840s. Amongst the first projects was the elegant terrace of Graingerville South and he clearly intended to create a middle-class villa suburb (Fig. 2.7) in the north of the area. Negotiations with the Tyneside Natural History Society, seeking to develop Botanical and Zoological Gardens at this time, held out the prospect of the creation of a positive externality function for the area. But Grainger also recognised that industrial and commercial development would be profitable, especially along the riverside southern section of the Estate. Accordingly, a serious proposal was made to create Newcastle’s main line railway station there, connecting north to Edinburgh, west to Carlisle and east to Tynemouth.

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Although some of these developments were started, and some remain, Grainger had over-stretched himself. He was declared bankrupt and was forced to leave Elswick Hall and abandon his plans. The management of his affairs fell to his associate, the remarkable John Clayton, Newcastle’s Town Clerk and it was Clayton who subsequently managed the development of the area in the interests of servicing Grainger’s debts. This involved a very different type of development—and one that played into many of the social objectives of the ‘ruling class’ relating to how to respond to the emergence of more militant working-class movements. This process took place over a lengthy period as Clayton’s decisions, especially their timing, were designed to maximise profitability—parts of the Estate were sold off piecemeal (e.g. Fig. 2.8) to builders/developers, often under quite specific covenants relating to the form of development. The morphology of the emerging area thus owed a huge amount to the decision-making of this one individual—this was the process by which the area took on its form. A very similar role with similar objectives was played by W.G. Armstrong in the development of parts of the Benwell Estate immediately to the west. For example, the area marked as number 1 on Fig. 2.9 had been inherited by Buddle Atkinson (a minor) but with Armstrong and a colleague as guarantors. Although Armstrong didn’t actually own the land, he therefore had the power to determine when and how development took place. The strategy was the same as that employed by John Clayton in his management of the Elswick Estate, with a process of sub-division and sale to small building firms for building development (Fig. 2.9). Significantly, there is no doubt that this involved a clear process of social engineering, linking morphology and social outcomes. Daunton (1983) has demonstrated that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, a new form of working-class housing emerged, one that had quite specific social objectives and outcomes:

…the private domain of the house moved from a promiscuous sharing of facilities to an encapsulated or self-contained residential style. Secondly, the public domain of the city lost a cellular quality which had entailed an ambiguous semi-public and semi-private use of space, and took on a much more open texture. The third change is implied in these comments in the developments in the private and public domains. The boundary or threshold between the two became less ambiguous and more definite, less penetrable and more impermeable. (p. 12)

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Furthermore, the development of Elswick and, especially, Benwell meant that they were effectively new towns. They had the effect of separating skilled manual workers from the unskilled. The former were pulled out of high density, tenemented residential areas in the central city and quayside whilst the latter remained in such localities. Additionally, in the detailed development of the Benwell estate, for example, certain streets were designated for rather superior housing, aimed at clerical and supervisory grade of workers (Barke 1977). This had the result of associating the skilled manual workers with those who supervised them at work in their residential environment, a process of conscious social engineering.

The form and character of such ‘respectable’ working-class areas in the second half of the nineteenth century is usually interpreted through the imposition of local bye-laws, relating to minimum standards and building requirements (Daunton 1983; Muthesius 1982). These were introduced by national level public health legislation. But, in fact, the detail of such bye-laws was powerfully influenced by local interests and subject to manipulation. This is one reason why regional ‘types’ of working-class housing emerged in Britain, some with quite specific form characteristics, including on Tyneside (Lancaster 1994) as will be demonstrated below.

Therefore, contrary to Richard Grainger’s intentions, what was built in Elswick and Benwell was a working-class suburb, a visually apparent morphological region that is usually characterised as a coherent unit. However, as already implied, there were important internal variations within the area and this raises important questions about the scale of resolution in determining a distinctive morphological region. At what level or scale should the defining characteristics be identified—and for what purpose? Such questions remain the topics of a rather different analysis but, for the present purpose, it is clear that the processes we have examined produced a morphologically distinct residential area (Fig. 2.6) but within this we can identify a typology of high-density terraced housing with subtle differentiations (Fig. 2.10 1–5) which related very closely to social categorisations within the inhabitants.

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The area actually consisted of a hierarchy of terraced residential housing types. At the apex of this hierarchy was the two-storey house with a small private front garden and its own back yard (10.1), catering mainly for lower grade white-collar workers such as clerks and office workers. A slightly different arrangement housing similar households was the pedestrian-walkway street (10.2). Both these categories often demonstrated decorative details around doors and windows. Distinctly lower in the social hierarchy was the ‘Tyneside flat’ (Lancaster 1994; Pearce 1994) but this category also exhibited its own subtle social hierarchy. The basic ‘Tyneside flat’ form consists of a series of two-storey terraces with each storey containing a self-contained flat, normally of two bedrooms. The flats have adjacent entrance doors, one of which leads directly to a staircase to the upper flat. At the rear is an annexe containing a small scullery and the upper flat has an external staircase down to a small back yard containing an outside toilet and coal storage space. The lower flat has a rear door opening directly into this yard. The slightly superior ‘Tyneside flat’ possesses a small front garden and bay windows (10.3) whilst a notch lower in the typology is the version with a token small external front space but with no bay window and no or very limited decoration of door and window frames (10.4). In the basic form of this typology, the front door opens directly onto the street (10.5).

These detailed variations that emerged through a process of conscious segregation of workers were subsequently to have a fundamental impact on the morphology of policy intervention in this area, particularly in the period after the Second World War.

What was experienced in the west end of Newcastle was a set of morphological processes that visually transformed this morphological region and which were largely driven by public policy. The area experienced a succession of policy phases in social housing (see Hanley 2007). Yet, the morphological outcomes of these policies were related directly to the hierarchical division within the original working-class housing provision identified above.

British housing policy has passed through a series of distinctive phases (Mullins and Murie 2017) each with their own distinctive morphological outcomes (see Barke 2010) but, clearly, not all of these will apply to every locality. In our study of the west end of Newcastle, the nature of its development meant that substantial parts of the area could be classified as slum property. The area was therefore not directly impacted upon by earlier twentieth-century policies designed to expand the numerical volume of housing (general needs) the main outcomes of which, initially at least, were strongly influenced by the garden city movement. Such housing was largely conventional, two-storey, semi-detached with gardens front and back built at a relatively low density of around 12 houses to the acre (Hanley 2007). But the fate of west Newcastle was different (CDP 1976). Influenced by the 1930 Housing Act and the subsequent reduction in subsidy levels due to the financial crash of 1931, slum clearance housing became the only form of provision for older industrial areas. In the later 1930s, therefore, sections of Elswick and Benwell were scheduled for slum clearance (Fig. 2.11), although the outbreak of the Second World War delayed implementation of the policy.

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The massive housing shortage after the war gave additional impetus to policies to improve housing overall. Accordingly, a much larger area of Benwell and Elswick was scheduled for demolition and redevelopment (Fig. 2.12). The predominant residential accommodation in the areas shown for clearance in Fig. 2.12 was precisely the types at the bottom of the terraced housing typology identified above. However, the replacement housing, mostly built between 1956 and 1960, was highly problematic, consisting of badly designed blocks of three- or five-storey flats built to minimum standards (CDP 1976; Benwell Community Project 1978b). If the previous generation of housing was bad, their replacement was not a great deal better, especially in the light of mid-twentieth-century expectations. In other words, the worst contemporary housing was simply being reproduced in the same area. By 1976 this ‘new’ housing was itself condemned and scheduled for demolition, largely due to the pressure from local activists.

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In the later 1960s, a further significant shift in national housing policy took place. This was an abandonment of large-scale slum clearance, with its demolition of vast areas and a switch to prolonging the life of older properties. In reality, the ‘worst’ of the nineteenth-century terraced housing stock had mostly been demolished. This new policy impacted mainly on the rather higher levels of the nineteenth-century terraced housing typology. Such housing was modernised through the availability of improvement grants for new bathrooms and kitchens, repairing or replacing roofs, damp proofing, etc. But this policy was spatially targeted (Fig. 2.13) meaning that the chief beneficiaries were the descendants of those ‘clerical and supervisory’ grade of workers who had inhabited such superior terraced housing from the beginning of the area’s development.

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In another major switch of policy, reflecting the inflexible ideological commitment of the Conservative right wing government of Margaret Thatcher, it was determined that local authority (council) housing should be taken out of their control and as much as possible be sold off. The ‘right to buy’ of tenants was introduced with extremely generous subsidies to encourage the purchase of their houses. The morphological impact of this was twofold. Inevitably, the ‘best’ of the remaining local authority housing stock was the most attractive for purchase, producing enclaves of new owner-occupied dwellings in Newcastle’s west end. The second impact was the residualisation of the remaining stock for which there was no market appeal (for example, the high-rise blocks of flats at Cruddas Park, Elswick) or where tenants could not afford to buy, even at heavily subsidised prices. Inevitably therefore, as the corollary of the emergence of new enclaves of owner-occupation, were the pockets of socially deprived and residualised housing stock (Barke 1997).

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the policy arena in terms of social housing moved to an emphasis on what was termed regeneration, manifest in the 1986 Housing and Planning Act. Superficially, the thrust of policy was still to maintain and ‘rejuvenate’ the older stock. But, crucially, this was conditional on transferring its management to housing associations or Registered Social Landlords (RSLs). Central Government effectively took away control of social housing from Local Government. Social rented housing thus became even more clearly simply a safety net for vulnerable households but the reality is that social housing was effectively being sold off faster than it was being replaced. In areas where this has appeared to be impossible, where there appeared to be no market demand (although homelessness increased significantly), the policy response has often been clearance. Somewhat ironically, the ‘vision’ for the west end for 2020 under the label ‘Going for Growth’ involved the demolition of 3,000 dwellings (Newcastle City Council 1999). The intention was to build new housing but only a limited number of developments have taken place, leaving substantial swathes of open land. At the same time, where such new developments have occurred, their form and layout marks a significant change from the linear terraces of the nineteenth century (Fig. 2.14) with pockets of small owner-occupied dwellings in cul-de-sacs, named ‘Gardens’ or ‘Close’ replacing the former geometric morphology (Newcastle City Council 2021). Hanley (2007) summarises the public sector intervention in the provision of working-class housing thus:

What began as a nineteenth-century crusade to house the urban poor…eventually turned into just another industry, co-opted by large building firms who received state subsidies to build quickly and carelessly, and encouraged by the short-term thinking of governments whose votes relied on quick solutions to visible problems. (Hanley 2007, pp. 50–51)

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In morphological terms, what has emerged in the west end of Newcastle is a highly fragmented palimpsest of housing types and characteristics. Nevertheless, the processes that produced the initial development of the West End of Newcastle have reverberated onwards and have influenced subsequent policy processes and outcomes. The visual link between late nineteenth-century terraced housing in the West End and twentieth-century housing styles may, at first sight, appear to be limited but the processes that have produced the latter are firmly embedded in the experience of the former.

Anglo-European urban morphology has had an understandable tendency to focus on particular kinds of urban environment. For example, the type of areas that figure prominently include the elegance and beauty of Italian and other Renaissance cities, the seductive romantic appeal of small mediaeval towns and the discrete charm of middle-class suburbs. However, areas sometimes dismissively characterised as former industrial slums deserve more attention, are certainly challenging for urban morphology, and possess many features worthy of exploration.

In terms of the overall argument, what has been presented here is not about any fundamental change. But it is a request for a slight swing of the pendulum in urban morphological research and a plea for a more overt consideration of causative processes and to see more studies where ‘process’ is made explicit rather than being implied. In short, I believe it is necessary to think more about that word ‘morphogenesis’ and to ask more closely ‘what actually is going on here’ and ‘what are the transformative processes’? We have many excellent studies that describe the morphological results of various processes. What our discipline needs is more studies of the morphological processes themselves. One direction that this inevitably takes us in is a deeper look at decision-making, and that isn’t just decision-making by key individuals but by corporate and administrative bodies as well.

In terms of academic provenance, the example of west Newcastle also speaks to one of the significant debates on the process of urban growth, particularly in the nineteenth century, a debate that Jeremy Whitehand was centrally involved in (Whitehand 1972, 1975, 1978; Daunton 1978; Cannadine 1977; Rodger 1979). On the one hand, the argument (mainly from the urban historian, Daunton 1978) was that decision-making by landowners was the key factor in the timing and form of development. On the other hand (partly represented by Whitehand) was the argument that the timing of development and, to some extent, the form of development was powerfully influenced by the land market and/or bid rent processes. Our historical example from West Newcastle suggests that these are not necessarily polar opposites, but are actually part of the same set of processes. Whilst a key factor was the decision-making by landowners (or controlling agents), those decisions were almost always made in the light of maximising profitability. Quite clearly, decision-takers, whether it was John Clayton or Armstrong, were influenced predominantly by economic factors, especially in terms of the timing of development and its form in terms of type and density.