Coun Bill Robson, Coun Olive Kaer, Coun Doris Starkey and, disappearing fast

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Coun Bill Robson, Coun Olive Kaer, Coun Doris Starkey and, disappearing fast

Coun Bill Robson, Coun Olive Kaer, Coun Doris Starkey and, disappearing fast, Coun Jean Baty.
If it wasnt for the smiling faces, you would be forgiven to think that this lovely lady had fallen down a manhole, when this picture was taken in September 1976.
However, Mrs Jean Baty, here disappearing fast, and her fellow adventurers, were about to embark on an arduous trek through the Victoria Tunnel originally linking Spital Tongues Colliery with Byker quayside.
The party was made up mainly of members of the citys planning committee who had gone to see what conditions were like in the then nearly 140-year-old tunnel, which they hoped to open to the public.
Built in 1839, the two-and-a-half miles long tunnel had only a short working life in 1860 the colliery went bankrupt and the underground railway was closed.
Yet the trip brought a touch of nostalgia to Coun Walter Wilson who remembered the tunnel as a wartime air raid shelter.
He said: I remember going down into the tunnel from Ouse Street. It was much wider at that end, although things always seem much bigger through the eyes of a child.
That might be so, but cold, wet and pitch black in places it still was for this jolly bunch years later.
15th September 1976

NCJ
NCJ Archive
Mirrorpix
WA*5694466

Media ID 21610849

© Mirrorpix

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