There were First World War practice trenches in this field (known as Trench Field), now ploughed away {1}.

One of three such sites (used to be one at Kenton plus a third unknown site). Used to triangulate the altitude and range of a zeppelin. It consists of a circular reinforced concrete base with a telephone point, but the compass direction dial has gone {1}. The circular planar surface is 1.5m in diameter and 0.6m high. Contains a recess for a field telephone connected to the anti-aircraft guns command post.

18th century house and 19th century additions. 18th century part - local pinkish brick in English garden wall bond, now mostly pebbledashed. 19th century part - snecked, tooled sandstone with ashlar quoins and dressings. Baronial style. 18th century part - 2 storeys, 6 bays, with rear wing forming L-shape, late19th century sash windows in box frames with tooled stone lintels and projecting stone sills.19th century part in baronial style: 3 storey battlemented tower with first-floor drip string and eaves corbel table with animal angle gargoyles {1}. Owned by the Duke of Northumberland until the 1970s but rented out. In mid C19 it was occupied by J.T. Ramsay and his family. He was accused of stealing fittings and goods from the hall after becoming bankrupt and was taken to court by the owner. Later occupants were Michael Spencer (son of John Spencer, steel manufacturer and coalowner of Newburn), the Appleby family and Dr Telfer. In 1980 the house was sold to developers and split into 2 dwellings (Walbottle Hall and Millstone House). 3 houses were built on the site of the walled garden in the 1970s (Nos. 1-3 Walbottle Hall Gardens). The pebbled drive to the Hall has been moved. The gate piers are not original but they are in-keeping.

Stone barn to rear of walled garden (HER 5026). South elevation is of brick, others are of stone. The barn has been sympathetically converted into a house. Painted green window frames and doors using original openings. Slate roof with roof lights.

Walled garden to the rear of Walbottle House. Walls are of handmade brick and stone rubble. Decorative iron gate in east wall. Entranceway in rear wall with stone lintel and 20th century steel gate.

House, now 2 separate dwellings (Walbottle House and Walbottle House North) previously 3 separate dwellings. Early 18th century; late 18th century rear wing; considerable 19th century and 20th century alterations. Coursed rubble, pebbledashed, with graduated green slate roof; stone gable copings on curved kneelers; yellow brick chimneys. Rear wing red brick with hipped roof of similar materials. 2 storeys. 20th century glazed door with overlight; 20th century cross casements.19th century pent left extension. Wing probably once a stable. Pointed-arched first floor window with Y tracery. On rear elevation a round-arched window in stone surround with keystone, impost blocks and radial glazing bars. 20th century extension not of interest. Interior - dog-leg stair with stout turned balusters and square moulded handrail; 3 early19th century chimneypieces complete with grates, and one room with cornice of the period {1}. In 1855 it was the home of the Potter family, coalowners. Then the Lindsay family, shipowners. In later years it was owned by Dr Messer, sociologist and educationalist, who was Medical Officer of Health to Newburn Urban District Council. He was responsible for the construction of Lemington Adult School.

Mid 18th century farmhouse and adjoining stable. Built of reddish-brown brickwork with some use of coursed rubble masonry. The annexe retains a pantiled roof, the remainder of the block has been reroofed in asbestos sheeting. In the late 18th century or early C19, a dairy and barn were added. The dairy is of masonry construction, now rendered with purlin roof with sarking boards. The barn is of coursed rubble and brick. The boarded stable door sits under a massive lintel. In the late19th century the house underwent massive refurbishment which removed all earlier details. The eaves were raised, part of the south elevation was rebuilt and a new roof was constructed. The stair was rebuilt and doors of four sunk moulded panels fitted throughout. The floor structures were renewed.19th century fireplaces were fitted in parlour and bedrooms. A door was broken through the east end of the first floor passage at the back of the house. The building was entirely refenestrated with four-pane sashes to south elevation and minor windows elsewhere. Minor openings in the barn and west gable of the house were blocked. The barn and stable were reroofed. The 1st edition Ordnance Survey map shows the farmstead much as it is now although it now lacks the timber sheds which extended to the west of the barn. The east range shown on the map is also now gone. The horse-engine attached to the barn on the first edition is no longer present. By the second edition OS map the courtyard buildings were complete and the courtyard subdivided {1}.

In the years leading up to the outbreak of World War One, warships of increasing size were being demanded by the world’s competing navies. It was in response to this that a new naval yard was established on a 70 acre site at Bill Quay, Walker by Sir W G Armstrong, Mitchell & Co. Ltd. The yard was equipped with nine building berths, the largest measuring 1000feet by 120 feet, with 10 ton cranes on the intervening concrete piers. A fitting out quay 2133 feet long, with 32 feet depth of water, was located downstream of the building berths.
Production was gradually transferred there from the company’s existing naval yard at Elswick. In October 1913 Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, laid the keel of the first battleship, and by 1915 the yard employed some 3500 men. Like the Low Walker works, ownership of this company was subsequently transferred, successively to Sir W G Armstrong & Co. Ltd. and Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. Ltd. In 1928 the yard closed due to the scarcity of naval orders, and in the same year a partial merger with Vickers Ltd. of Barrow led to the yard’s transfer to the ownership of the new company, Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd. After six years of almost continuous closure, the yard re-opened in Autumn 1934 in response to an increase in orders leading up to, and during World War Two. Warship production during the war was on a large scale, with one battleship, four aircraft carriers, three cruisers, 24 destroyers, one monitor, 16 submarines and many motor and tank landing craft being completed.
Production at the Walker Naval Yard switched to merchant shipping during 1946, but naval warships and frigates continued to be produced and fitted-out in smaller numbers up to the mid-1980s. In January 1968 the works became the Walker yard of Swan Hunter Shipbuilders Ltd., being used mainly to fulfil orders for large container ships and bulk carriers. Following completion of the fitting-out of the Ark Royal in June 1985, the original shipyard offices were demolished (by 1988) and the yard put on a care and maintenance basis in preparation for its proposed sale for industrial redevelopment. There is now little surviving evidence for the shipyard {1}.

John Wigham Richardson, a Quaker, had gained considerable experience in ship construction whilst working in the drawing office at Hawthorns on the Tyne. He started up a yard at Wallsend in 1860 with family funds. His manager was the Scot, C J Denham, who became a partner in 1862. When first opened, the yard's workforce was only about 200, which turned out an annual average of about 2000 tons of shipping. An important order, leading to the production of a number of similar vessels, was that for a train ferry for the Prussian Government, the PS Ruhr in 1865.
During the 1870s, annual production at the yard increased to around 6,000 tons per year. In 1870, the first of a total of nine vessels for the Laverello Line was launched from the yard. Output again into the 1880s, with an average of 13,500 tons produced by the yard over the years 1880-84 and 25,000 tons produced in the boom year of 1883. The scale of vessels increased, also: In 1888, the steel-hulled passenger-liner Alfonso XII weighed just over 5,000 tons. This was not much short of the total annual production of the yard in the early 1870s.
With the depression in the shipbuilding industry over the mid 1880s, the massive production total of 1883 was not surpassed until 1896. By 1889, however, the yard had produced 178 ships, totalling more than 200,000 tons and had sold these vessels to more than 60 different customers, many of them abroad.
In 1903, the Neptune Yard was amalgamated with Swan Hunter. Upgrading of the facility had already been envisaged over the late 1890s and was mooted constantly over the next decade, but few significant changes actually occurred. Despite this, the thirteen years from 1901-13 saw Swan Hunter with the amalgamated Neptune Yard achieve an annual average output of 93,000 tons, 'a feat unequalled by any other firm in the world.' (Clarke 1997, 222 vol 1).
Map Evidence
Second Edition Ordnance Survey
This survey shows the Neptune Yard with its new boiler works, the latter set up in the early 1880s to the north of Hunter’s Quay Metal Extracting Works and to the south of the Tyne Pontoons and Dry Docks (SMR No. 2202). The core of the yard lies to the south of Hunter’s Quay and has subsumed a number of earlier yards (SMR Nos. 4208, 4217, 4218). Scattered over the river frontage of the yard are at least six building berths or slips.
Third Edition Ordnance Survey
The boiler works has been extended to the south and a new engine works section has been added. A major new set of building slips lies to the south of the Boiler and Engine Works
Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey
No significant alterations {1}. 2011 the dry docks were photographed ahead of infilling and redevelopment on the site. Docks 1, 2 and 3 were recorded. Dock dates to the second half of the 19th century (c.1860s) while docks 2 & 3 were established in the early 20th century {3}.

A yard was opened by C A Schlesinger (a former Stephenson's apprentice) and F B Davies (who trained at Mitchells and worked for the company in India for four years) in Wallsend in 1863. Two sailing ships were launched before their first steamer SS Llandaff was launched in 1865. The yard remained in operation for over 30 years and produced a total of 167 vessels including, in 1868, the SS Kielder Castle, the first Schlesinger Davies vessel of over 1000 tons.
Davies bought Schlesinger out of the yard before 1881. The company started to fail as ship construction nationally fell in the early 1890s and finally closed in 1893. In 1897, the yard was bought by Swan Hunter for the construction of floating dry docks. The first steel self-docking floating gravity dock was built there in the same year.
Map Evidence
Second Edition Ordnance Survey
Yard extends from the line of the old Coxlodge Waggonway in the south-west to the swan Hunter Yard in the north-east. The yard contains as many as seven building berths or slips. The north-eastern corner of the yard is densely packed with structures. Rail lines run from the buildings to the riverside at the eastern and western edges of the yard.
Third Edition Ordnance Survey,
The old Schlesinger Davies yard, now subsumed within Swan, Hunter, is almost entirely taken up by the massive building berths for the construction of the TS Mauretania.
Due to increased orders at his Low Walker Yard, Mitchell arranged for his two senior managers (Coulson and Cook) to open a new shipyard at St Peter's in 1871. In 1873, the business moved to a site of over six acres in Wallsend, adjacent to the Schlesinger-Davies Yard (SMR No.???). In 1874, Mitchell took full control of the yard and placed it under the control of Charles Sheriton Swan, operating as C S Swan and Co. During his five years in charge the yard produced over 30 vessels, amounting to 30,000 tons. In 1883, land was purchased from an adjacent alkali works, and the East Yard was created.
In 1879, Charles Swan was killed in an accident on board a steamer travelling back from Russia.
In 1880, George Hunter joined the Wallsend Yard and became the managing partner, in a company now titled C S Swan and Hunter. At the start of the 1880s, around 700 people were employed in the yard. 20, 000 tons of shipping was turned out in the boom year of 1883. Over the same year, land was purchased from an adjacent alkali works, and the East Yard was created. . With this increased capacity, production greatly increased: in 1889, for instance, 28,000 tons of shipping was launched from the yard. By this time, C S Swan and Hunter were responsible for 10% of the total output from the Tyne, in third place behind Palmer's and Armstrong-Mitchell.
In 1895, C S Swan and Hunter was formed into a private limited company. The yard was now employing about 2000 men and facilities in the East Yard were about to be upgraded with the installation of two glass-roofed building-berths. In 1897, work began on the SS Ultonia, the first vessel for the Cunard Line. Building in the covered berths began in 1900.
In 1903, Swan-Hunter and J Wigham Richardson's Neptune Yard were merged, as preparatory groundwork for the bid to construct Swan Hunter's Ship No. 735; the TS Mauretania.
The merger of Wigham Richardson Ltd and C.S. Swan and Hunter Ltd in 1903 occurred partly because a preliminary contract for a new Transatlantic liner for Cunard was tying up much of Swan Hunter’s capital and resources. Two new larger berths of 750 ft had to be constructed, which came to be the famous gantry crane berths fitted with 7 electric gantry cranes and roofed with glass. They were considered Tyneside landmarks for over 60 years. Further modernisation included new machine tools for punching, planing and countersinking.
The output of the two yards was now combined and Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd consisted of nearly 80 acres and a continuous river frontage of 4000 ft. The company concentrated on building cargo-liners and tankers, tanker sizes increasing in size from 10,000 dwt in 1903 to 15,500 dwt in 1913 when the San Fraterno became the largest tanker in the world. The company also developed new designs for train and passenger ferries.
During WWI the yard built 55 warships of 1000,000 tons and merchant construction of 290,588 grt including passenger liners, cargo liners, icebreakers, tankers, cable ships and floating docks.
Due to the yards ability to build any type of ship it was virtually the only yard that managed to stay open during the Depression. At this time almost every man was without work and in 1933 the complete tonnage from the Tyne was only 11,033 grt. Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson had the majority of this work. Over the next few years the yard continued to operate below capacity, but by the latter half of the thirties a renewed demand for oil meant and increase In orders for tankers. Tramps were also back in demand, with Hopemount shipping Co. (90% owned by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd) ordering seven as grain carriers. Further to this was the continuous orders from the Admiralty for whom they built 6 Destroyers over the next three years.
At the outbreak of WWII the yard had extensive orders from private owners, for whom the company built 55 ships during the war, this was alongside large scale orders for warships.
By the end of the war the yards extended over 80 acres, including 4000 ft of river frontage, seventeen building berths up to 1000 ft, and three dry-docks.
After the war the company returned to the construction of tankers, which represented over one-third of their output until they amalgamated with other yards in 1968. By the sixties they were building ‘supertankers’ which had a deadweight of up to 117270 compared to an earlier supertanker Velutina, launched in 1950 which had a deadweight of 28220.