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Point Pleasant, the Site of a Roman Dock?

The old Riverside Branch Line, which preceded the Tyne & Wear Metro, included the station ‘Point Pleasant’ between Wallsend and Willington Quay, which is now Smulders’ Hadrian Yard. But the name is very curious, especially with it being so close to Segedunum.

The line originated in the 1840s, making it one of the oldest passenger lines in the world.

This is what the archaeological theorist, Raymond Selkirk (1931-2006), wrote about the name in The Piercebridge Formula: A Dramatic New View of Roman History, p66 (1983):

“for reasons not understood, the names ‘Cold Harbour’ and ‘Mount Pleasant’ are found very frequently on Roman roads or Roman sites. On the ridge north-west of Corbridge and just south of the Roman wall at map ref NY 975 667, there is a farm called Mount Pleasant and this farmhouse stands on a mound which looks very much like the ruin of an ancient building. It is an ideal spot to be the site of a Roman signal station.”

Surely, given this context, Point Pleasant represents the site of a major Roman port on the Tyne serving the fort at Wallsend.

Photo from http://disused-stations.org.uk/p/point_pleasant/

If a dock stood here at the confluence of the Wallsend Burn and the Tyne, then you’d presume a similar arrangement existed at North Shields Fish Quay, where the Pow Burn meets the river opposite Arbeia. While up river at both the Lort Burn (bridge site) and the Newburn Gut (navigable limit) similar docks or wharfs would have been in use.

Listen to the audio for this post here:

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Penbal 1 – Lee Stoneman

No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.

Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)

Photograph: Lee Stoneman

Photograph: Lee Stoneman

Penbal.uk

No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.

Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)

Penbal.uk
Penbal.uk

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