TWENTIETH CENTURY DEFENCE SITES of TYNE and WEAR

Introduction
Introduction
There is perhaps no time in history, either
recent or from the distant past, that
continues to generate as much popular
interest as the time that spans the two global
wars of the first half of the twentieth century.
As these events are made remote by the
passage of time, it is possible to see the
monuments of that era as only the latest in a
long sequence of defences that stretch back
to the distant past. The twentieth century
fortifications on the British coast are located
on the same cliff tops and promontories as
the Roman “Saxon shore” forts and signal
stations, and at the mouth of the Tyne we
can trace in detail how the nature of
defensive instillations evolved through eight
centuries of naval warfare. In the Middle
Ages, the stone fortress of Tynemouth Castle
formed a strong-point which controlled the
Tynemouth Castle
4
lower Tyne and access to its hinterland but
by the sixteenth century, the need to
establish suitable positions for cannon saw
the replacement of the stone tower by
carefully designed artillery forts, first at
Spanish Battery and then closer to the river
at North Shields. The seventeenth century
fort here, Clifford’s Fort, was converted from
a 40 gun artillery position to a mine-laying
base in the late nineteenth century. These
sites were all adapted for use in the two
world wars, but supplemented with other
installations to meet the changing character
of the threat.
The Second World War saw the full
development of a process, begun in the
1914-18 War, that saw the civilian population
and economy totally immersed in the conflict,