‘You won’t see anything like it in the world’

BARBARA HODGSON on a Tyneside treasure that you can see close up

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IT'S both weathered the storms and risen from the ashes - quite literally - and now one of Tyneside’s historic treasures will be open this weekend to visitors who are being invited to step back in time to the Tyne’s heyday.

Dunston Staiths is a blast from the past, capturing the days of hard slog on the riverside as coal supplies were loaded onto ships there for export.

The wooden structure in Gateshead, believed to be the largest in Europe, dates from 1893 and by the 1920s it was said to be loading a whopping 140,000 tons of coal a week, the fruits from north Durham coalfields first being transported there by rail lines long since gone. But the giant wooden frame, which is a protected structure, still stands its ground on the banks of the Tyne, a 12-minute drive over the river from Newcastle, despite being part-dismantled in the eighties before its restoration and opening to the public as part of the Gateshead Garden Festival scheme in 1990.