Andrew Wood

18.09.24

I was born in Sunderland and grew up in Peterlee. I went to Our Lady for primary and junior school, and later St Bedes for secondary, back before it was rebuilt. It was an old building. By the time I went there the place was decrepit. At least, I thought it was. Some of the teachers were even the same as when my mam had gone there decades prior, which seemed wild to me when I was young. It felt like it was on its last legs, decaying and full of asbestos. But otherwise, yeah, childhood was good.

I had a good friend who lived with his mam in one of the cantilever houses from the 60s. Not far down from Our Lady of the Rosary church. We used to hang out in that neighbourhood quite a lot. I thought those buildings were unusual even as a kid: cool though, I liked the little carport/garden patios. We’d hang around there and sometimes down at the Pavilion, by then I think its worst days were behind it, this was probably late-90s.

Happy memories, I guess, of Peterlee. Even though it’s always been kind of run down in my lifetime.

One thing I remember – unless it is a kind of false memory – was the star on top of Lee House at Christmas, I can’t recall when or why it disappeared, but I always liked that as a kid. It seemed more vibrant then, and there were a lot fewer empty shops. Typically, every week, I met with my cousins down the town centre with my aunty and uncle.

I remember there being a lot of different sweet shops, which I think are all gone now. We’d often pop in Woolworths and the old ASDA, where we’d get a cup of tea with my mam and grandma. It’s a Poundland now. I also remember where the “new” ASDA is, what was then the Magistrates court, the fire station and a square that I think had a children’s playground. It was a better town back then, more lively. I think there may have been a market there, too. We also used to have quite a few banks in the town centre, which are now all gone, but I guess people use cash a lot less now. That’s just the reality of the town, it’s trajectory.

I used to work for the County Council Libraries. I wasn’t stationed at one in particular. I just went where they were short-staffed. I moved around. I went off to University, lived in Sunderland, Newcastle, came back for a stint then went to the US. When I was living locally, I would sometimes work at the old Peterlee library. When I was a teenager, I used to go to gigs at the college sometimes before it was all knocked down. That library was getting old but I remember going there as a kid and borrowing books and VHS videos from there. A lot of fond memories.

It’s terrible what’s happened to libraries locally and nationally. Peterlee is not unique in its decline, it’s basically happening to every town in the UK, especially any town considered ex- or post-industrial. The high streets are dead, the libraries are being closed, or they’re being shifted into leisure centres. I think there’s a drop in the quality of the libraries when they do that. it’s much better to have a standalone dedicated space. I was deeply saddened when they closed Sunderland’s main library. I used to love it there with the NGCA above it. They shifted that into the museum, and it’s never been the same since. And I think the same with Peterlee when they moved the library into the leisure centre.

I think there’s been a change in the understanding of the purpose of libraries and what they offer. Having worked in a bunch in the North East, you’re expected to almost carry out some kind of social work. In Murton, Seaham, you might get kids coming in who may not have the best home life, the library becomes a refuge, they go there to play Xbox, FIFA, to shelter from whatever else was going on in their life. Safety nets have been eroded and I think the state expects the likes of libraries to pick up the slack.

The library, separate from the home, separate from the workplace, and outside of consumption occupies that increasingly rare position as a space for people to gather in which there is no expectation to pay money, right? You can just exist there. I think that’s really important, but it is in decline.

I love the Apollo Pavilion. It’s a landmark structure of international importance. Sometimes, when I was younger, we’d walk down there. That was probably the late ’90s. I didn’t hang out there too much because it felt more like that was where the teenagers would hang, it had a bit more edge to it. We were still kids, but we would mosey around the area. I’m glad it got the refurbishment and Grade II* listed.

[in reference to David Beaumont’s transcription] I think it would be great to fully restore a house in Sunny Blunts to its original state because the housing around there has kind of been modified beyond recognition in comparison to what it originally looked like. A small visitor centre, museum, or something would have been really good to draw people in and teach the history of the place.

I know some have complained, people coming from out of town who didn’t grow up there, trying to find it and it is really difficult. I don’t think they’ve always done a good job of promoting it. But that’s tied in with, I think, certain counsellors and the shame they might have that it existed in the first place and wanted rid of it. Rather than promoting it and using it as a way to bring people to the town. From the get-go, from the
date of construction, it needed some sort of caretaking team to oversee it and perform routine maintenance or clean up. You can’t just plop these things down, abandon them, and hope for the best. You have to weather all kinds, social upheavals.

It’s a product of its time. I think it’s really a bold experiment and should be championed, but again you can’t just place down artist-designed housing, tell people to live in it and that it’s going to be great. There seemed to be very little consultation. If you don’t have a plan, a multi-year or decade plan, to take care of it, things are going to fall apart. But at least the Pavilion was fully integrated into its landscape originally. Now it sits isolated, a relic from a future that never arrived.

The atmosphere at the time of the Pavilion’s planning is like mid-century paternalism. Obviously, there are a lot of issues with that, but I think I’d much rather take that over the kind of market-driven, big-money developer art-washing which we see everywhere now. It’s like a factory production line of how to redevelop an area now. A very different world, and I’d take the former over the latter. I guess you can glorify the Pavilion now that it’s got a listing. I think that’s like a real win for the town and its colourful history. The arguments surrounding the social behaviour stuff, I think it’s kind of bullshit. I think it was a misdiagnosis of the issue, where people placed the blame upon the Pavilion itself. If the problem was/is anti-social behaviour, it didn’t seem to be…‘why is that? let’s fix that,’ it was always…‘let’s get rid of the Pavilion.’

I think in an alternate history, let’s say the Pavilion didn’t exist, and you put park benches there. There are plenty of benches that you’d see in rundown towns, very much like Peterlee, where the kids gather around a bench, and they get the two-litre bottle of White Lightning, they get drunk, smoke some pot, get lairy. It’s the same issue. It doesn’t require a Brutalist public sculpture to generate it; the behaviour is there regardless. It could be a car park or a park bench. It’s a nimby mindset. ‘Not in my backyard, not next to my house’. Rather than, tackle the problem at its root they look for scapegoats, easy targets. Due to the lack of youth centres and opportunities for these kids, the Apollo Pavilion is a destination, a place to gather.

You could blow it up and you’d probably still get anti-social behaviour. It’s not the Pavilion’s fault. It never was. It’s a wider socio-economic issue that I think a lot of people just want to turn a blind eye to because these problems are so great that it just becomes easier not to tackle them.

I think one of the biggest crimes in Peterlee is what’s happened to the town centre. When it was originally built, it was as bold a concept as the Pavilion, and no one really talks about it in the same light, it wasn’t as controversial. But when it was first built with all the raised walkways and ornamental lakes people thought it was super futuristic. Compared to today it’s a crime how far it has sunk. It was privatisiation and subsequent sales to different development corporations that ran it into the ground, one after the other.

I am obsessed with a documentary called The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte. I’ve written a piece in relation to it. William H. Whyte outlined seven things that are required for a successful urban space, and I argue that Peterlee in the 60s in the town centre ticked all those boxes and solved all the problems before they were ever even diagnosed. The seven key areas were:

1. Sittable space
2. Street
3. Sun
4. Food
5. Water
6. Trees
7. Triangulation

Whyte on the topic of Triangulation: “The characteristic of a public space that can bring people together… usually an external stimulus of some kind, it could be a physical feature or a happening…” This physical stimulus could be a public sculpture that activates discussion among strangers, while happenings could be anything from musicians, to magicians, to mimes. In addition many subtle but essential factors were
observed that compounded the success of the above items, for example:

● Water must be accessible, touchable, with no signs or security that enforce the contrary

● Fencing by nature is divisive and disrupts the flow from street to square, resulting not in comfort or protection but a caged feeling that was more likely to result in the generation of undesirable or criminal behaviour rather than prevention

● Seating must meet certain requirements in height, depth, spacing and be in proximity to street, shade, and water. Seating must provide the pedestrian with a sense of choice

In many ways, whether by planning or chance or some combination thereof, Peterlee’s town centre was built with many of these solutions in place, solutions to problems that mysteriously it had never had to face owing to its new town status, and made all the more unusual given that such problems would not be widely diagnosed in urban planning for many years to come.

The town centre’s trajectory in my eyes is a thoroughly depressing backwards retelling of Whyte’s research and subsequent documentary. Problems arising in the late 70s and diagnosed in New York in 1980 had already actually been solved in Peterlee of all places in the mid 1960s, before each solution was frustratingly chipped away at. While many urban spaces have made attempts to right these wrongs, if you were to look at Peterlee’s town centre in the 2020s it would appear to have doubled down on the creation of an inhospitable dead zone. Adding to this the rumours that further fencing is to be added do not give hope for a reversal of fortune.

I was never that big on going to the Peterlee Carnival. I have been, but it wasn’t something I did regularly. But I would go every year with family and friends to the bonfire night and fireworks display at Helford Road playing field. A lot of fond memories, I always thought it very atmospheric with the smell and haze of the fireworks in the air.

In winter we’d go sledging, back when we used to get more snow. On St Bede’s playing field where the hill would meet the all weather pitch, before they fenced it all off, that was a good spot. Probably not accessible anymore. And when we got bored of sledging, we’d make a giant snowball at the top then three or four of us would push it over the edge and down the hill.

As a teenager, I never really hung around in Peterlee that often. We’d either go to Durham, Sunderland, Newcastle, the Metrocentre or Hartlepool. When I was getting into music, the bands we wanted to see often didn’t come through the town, so we had to travel elsewhere for gigs or to buy CD’s. Though in the 70s I heard a lot of big names did stop here, but by the early 00s, no one was coming through Peterlee. Sometimes I’d pop into The Five Quarter for a pint with my dad, or when I was at the factory, meet a couple of the lads there, too. I worked on the industrial estate for 3 and a half years, fairly grim, it’s what was available. I don’t recommend it.

In relation to the housing, when they plan and cost, it was class-based from my understanding of the 60s and ‘70s. The houses around Sunny Blunts were working-class houses; that was who they were designated for, and I think corners are always going to be cut. In London, the Barbican for example is well maintained because it was designed much like Lubetkin’s Highpoint II, for middle-class professionals. There’s a great amount of care put into them and long-term planning for maintenance. Whereas in Peterlee, it was like…‘here’s a concrete box, get on with it.’

I still think it’s sad that we never got the original Lubetkin Peterlee, the three towers he proposed, and the road bridge over the Dene. Buildings designed to house working people with care and attention put into them. There are a few renderings, beautiful, colourful drawings of a bird’s eye view of what it could have looked like, and it’s like looking at a different world.