Silly Saturday

This sculpture, which one may regard as looking rather silly although rather fun, stands at the entrance to an area of housing known as St Peter's Basin, on the north bank of the Tyne a little to the east of the centre of Newcastle. It's named as a basin as it includes a rather nice marina.

It's probably not quite so silly when you find that it was created by the children of Raby Street Primary School in Byker, and was displayed at the National Garden Festival held in Gateshead in 1990. It's entitled "Fish with Two Heads" - the heads being of William Hawthorn, founder of Hawthorn Leslie Engineering Works which originally occupied the site, and Benjamin Brown, the first chairman of the company. The sculpture did require renovation a few years ago, which was performed by members of the local residents' association. Hawthorn Leslie was a shipbuilder and locomotive manufacturer: the company was founded on Tyneside in 1886 and ceased building ships in 1982.

St Peter's Basin housing was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Why did we go there this afternoon? Well that's a bit silly too. After we spent some time last Sunday in Edinburgh viewing flats which Son#1 was considering buying, this afternoon Son#3 had invited us to join him & his partner to view a couple of houses for sale in St Peter's Basin. However one of the viewings had to be postponed owing to one of the occupants being unwell, and after hanging around in the cold wind for the estate agent to arrive for the other viewing we found out that the silly lady had messed up her diary and couldn't make it after all! So we'll have to go back another day. At least it gave us a chance to have a look round the area.

Many thanks as always to admirer, the Silly Saturday host.