3-070-817 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

George Stephenson, Father of Railways: the Stephenson Memorial Institute on the site of Stephenson's cottage, at Willington Quay, [North Tyneside],1881. '...you looked far away over a green country, and presently down upon a quaint old town with a crooked spire. To-day the land is dotted with pit-hillocks and furnace-fires; the tramp of hundreds of miners is heard on the Chesterfield pavements at night and morning; and new communities have sprung up all along the valley and away on the distant hill-sides. Where there were fields, now there are houses and shops and stores; but rising up among them and challenging your attention as you come down "the forty steps" from Tapton are the gables, turrets, and spires of an educational institute, dedicated to the grand old master of Tapton House, and it is called "The (Stephenson Memorial Hall".' Illustration published in a special supplement to celebrate the centenary of the birth of British civil engineer and mechanical engineer George Stephenson (1781-1848). From "Illustrated London News", 1881.