Paradise House

Paradise House is first depicted on the 1780 Benwell Estate map and the 1811 Benwell Sale map. A surviving photograph in the West Newcastle Picture History Collection shows a substantial late 18th century two storey brick-built building, south of the hamlet of Paradise, on the bank of the Tyne. Paradise House is described in Eanas Mackenzie's 1825 History of Northuumberland as having "a fine view of the windings of the Tyne, and has a good garden in front which reaches the margins of the water" and in Elizabeth Spence Watson's (born 1838) autobiography as "a pretty house close to the river, the entrance to the garden being through a gate of whale’s jaws - now a rare site but common enough when whalers voyaged to the far northern seas for whales". The Royal Engineers conducting survey work for the first Ordnance Survey map in the late 1850s, described Paradise House as "a large house with outoffices and pleasure grounds (gardens) and a color manufactury (paint factory) attached". Paradise House was demolished in the 1950s.