Town in Tyne and Wear, England
Gateshead
Its name means 'goat's head', its best-known resident is a 20-metre steel angel, and its football club was once voted out of the League.
Key information
- County
- Tyne and Wear
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Angel of the North, Millennium Bridge, Baltic, The Glasshouse, the Metrocentre
- What locals are called
- Geordies
- Famous people
- Paul Gascoigne, Sir Joseph Swan
- Football clubs
- Gateshead FC
About Gateshead
The town named after a goat's head
Gateshead is old enough to appear in Bede. The Anglo-Saxon monk wrote of a place called Ad Caprae Caput, Latin for 'at the goat's head', where an abbot named Utta lived in the seventh century. The name is thought to mean a goat's headland, and it has barely changed since. For most of its life the town sat on the south bank of the Tyne, looking across the river at Newcastle. Coal, iron, glass and heavy engineering made it a working place, and its people share the Geordie name and the Geordie accent with their neighbours over the water.
The angel that changed the skyline
Antony Gormley's Angel of the North went up in February 1998 beside the A1. It stands 20 metres tall with a wingspan of 54 metres, and its weathering steel has rusted to a deep brown. Hundreds of tonnes of it stand on the site of a former colliery pithead baths, so a place where miners once washed off the coal dust now carries a giant winged figure. Locals were not all convinced at first. The Angel soon became one of Britain's best-known pieces of public art, and a shorthand for the North East itself.
A bridge that blinks
Gateshead's quayside is a showcase of reinvention. The Gateshead Millennium Bridge opened in 2001 and tilts to let ships pass, a movement nicknamed the blinking eye. It won the Stirling Prize for architecture in 2002. Beside it, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art opened in 2002 inside a former flour mill. Then came the glinting steel curves of Sage Gateshead in 2004, designed by Foster + Partners, now called The Glasshouse International Centre for Music. Just upstream, the Tyne Bridge, opened in 1928, links Gateshead to Newcastle.
Electric light, a car park and a shopping giant
Sir Joseph Swan, the inventor who worked on the incandescent light bulb, lived at Underhill in Low Fell, which became one of the first houses in the world lit by electric light bulbs, around 1880. In 1971 Gateshead's Trinity Square multi-storey car park starred in Get Carter, with Michael Caine chasing a villain across its upper decks. Fans were sad when it was demolished in 2010. In the 1980s the Metrocentre arrived, the brainchild of Sir John Hall, and was billed as Europe's biggest shopping and leisure centre. The 1990 National Garden Festival also brought crowds to the town.
Football's great Gateshead snub
Gateshead AFC joined the Football League in 1930 and played there for three decades, reaching the FA Cup quarter-finals in 1953. In 1960 the club were voted out of the League and replaced by Peterborough United, an injustice that still stings with older supporters. The modern Gateshead FC, known to fans as the Heed, play at the International Stadium, which is also home to Gateshead Harriers and many athletics meetings. Great North Run founder Brendan Foster ran for the Harriers. Paul Gascoigne, the midfielder who lit up Italia 90, was born in Gateshead.
What to eat and what to say
Eat like a Geordie and you'll be fed stottie cake, a large, flat, round bread, often stuffed with ham and pease pudding. Pease pudding, a thick spread of boiled split peas, is a Tyneside staple. You'll hear 'pet', 'hinny' and 'canny' used as warm greetings, while 'howay' means come on. Gateshead people take pride in a dry, blunt humour and a friendly welcome.