1886.] SEASIDE TREE-PLANTING. 567 



SEASIDE TREE-PLANTING AT SOUTH SHIELDS AND 



ELSEWHERE. 



LOOKING from the High Level Bridge at Newcastle, the one 

 impression conveyed by very multifarious objects is how art 

 has swept off every trace of nature from the scene. The old " Puffing 

 Billie," George Stephenson's first locomotive, stands beside us there 

 as a unique monument of that change which makes the erst silvery 

 Tyne, daughter of the Northumbrian Fells, an artificial canal studded 

 with giant coal traders or energetic little tugs. Its banks too, for 

 nine miles downwards, are little else than a continuous series of 

 warehouses, chemical works, timber stances, shipbuilding yards, or 

 forges. In an atmosphere teeming with discordant sounds and 

 disagreeable smells, what an effort to conceive of this district once 

 a scene of green fields or babbling brooks ! Yet South Shields Park, 

 just at the junction of the Tyne with the sea, has for the last 

 summer been asserting the natural claims of this smoke-land to 

 sylvan beauty. The new recreation-ground of this thriving borough 

 is divided into two parks on either side of the road terminating at 

 the pier, which stretches for some distance into the North Sea, 

 opposite to Tynemouth, and long known to visitors as a delightful 

 marine promenade. The intervening ground was covered by such 

 refuse as a shipping port and chemical factories can produce. Huge 

 ballast heaps, shifty quicksands, pools in which city youths indulged 

 in aquatic sports, constituted about as unpromising abodes of ugliness 

 in the vicinity of a thriving borough as could be singled out even 

 in this district, so remarkable for the artificial distortion of natural 

 landscape. Yet, given an energetic municipal surveyor like Mr. 

 Matthew Hall, together with distress amongst workpeople, and a 

 thoroughgoing town council, then presto the North Park with its 

 ungainly ballast heaps is converted into green hills with swee^Ding 

 terraces, from whose trim gravelled walks the eye may rest on the 

 hoary ruins of Tynemoutli opposite, or catch the ever-varying sea 

 view at the mouth of the busy river. The park below extends in 

 all to 13^ acres, and is laid out " so as to be a picture of prettiness 

 and order," being protected from sand-drifts by a broad and ornate 

 concrete wall seawards. The total length of the walks in the park 

 is from 1:^^ to If miles. Of course there are the usual appurten- 

 ances of a public park, such as an ornamental entrance lodge, band- 

 stand, rockeries and grottoes, all of which do infinite credit to the 

 designer, Mr. M. Hall, the borough engineer, who has laid out the 

 grounds, aided by professional advice from Fell & Co., Hexham, Avho 



