Romans started quarrying

Apr 5 2008 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

A FAVOURITE stretch of coastline on the doorsteps of thousands of people celebrated its 21st anniversary yesterday as a specially protected and cherished area.

The Leas at South Shields consists of two and a half miles of clifftop grassland, bays, stacks, caves, seabird colonies and wildflower swathes.

Running from Trow Point to Lizard Point, and including Souter lighthouse, it is vital for nature conservation and public leisure.

The Leas was created when farmland was grassed over in the 1950s and South Tyneside Council gave it to the National Trust in 1987.

Yesterday a plaque was unveiled at the lighthouse site to mark the anniversary.

On the edge of the Tyneside conurbation and a short distance from its Wearside equivalent, it is estimated that The Leas are used by up to 500,000 people a year.

Trust property manager Nick Dolan says: “It is a valuable green lung in a high density population area. People love it.”

The quality of the coastline is reflected in its Euro-designations of Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area and Ramsar site for its birdlife. It is also a coastal outcrop of rare magnesian limestone.

Nick says: “It is of special beauty and interest and must be one of the trust’s most open and easily accessible sites.”

But it is not so long ago that the coastline co-existed with industry in the shape of Whitburn pit, which closed in the 1960s, as did the lime kilns at Marsden Quarry.

The coastline features:

Trow Quarry: The Romans quarried limestone from the site to build parts of their fort of Arbeia in South Shields and later stone from here was used to build the piers at the mouth of the Tyne.

When quarrying ended , the void was half-filled with rubbish and demolition rubble. Erosion has exposed waste, but a scheme is about to begin to deal with the problem and provide protection from the waves. The cliffs began life as limey mud on the floor of a shallow, warm tropical sea more than 250 million years ago during the Permian period.

Frenchman’s Bay: Named after a French ship which ran aground in the 17th Century.

Man Haven Bay: Used before the building of the Tyne piers to launch pilot cobles when the sea was too rough across the Tyne bar. Once an active fishing bay.

Velvet Beds and Camel Island: The tidal island is named after its distinctive twin humps, and is also called Velvet Beds because of the short, fine springy turf of grass and thrift which used to grow on it.

Marsden Bay: Due to the varying hardness of the rocks, this stretch of coastline is studded with stacks, arches, headlands, bays and caves, sculpted by the sea.

These cliffs and stacks, reaching a height of 100ft, provide nesting ledges for more than 2,000 pairs of kittiwakes.

The fulmar petrel also breeds along the cliffs and numbers more than 200 pairs, and a substantial number of the UK’s cormorants have bred on Marsden Rock and Jack Rock in recent years.

The large stack in Marsden Bay is the remaining part of the once mighty Marsden Rock. It used to be much larger, with a natural arch, and Victorian visitors flocked here to climb stairs to the top.

Severe frosts following years of constant battering by seas and storms brought down the arch in February 1996. The dangerous smaller stack was blown up a year later to prevent its uncontrolled collapse.

Marsden limekilns: Built in the late 1870s.

The Marsden Rattler: The local railway, named because of the noise its carriages made, carried local coal, lime and quarried stone, and passengers between 1885 and 1953.

Souter Lighthouse: Opened in 1871 as the first in the world built to use electricity.

The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1988, bought by the National Trust and opened to the public in 1990.