In the years leading up to the outbreak of World War One, warships of increasing size were being demanded by the world’s competing navies. It was in response to this that a new naval yard was established on a 70 acre site at Bill Quay, Walker by Sir W G Armstrong, Mitchell & Co. Ltd. The yard was equipped with nine building berths, the largest measuring 1000feet by 120 feet, with 10 ton cranes on the intervening concrete piers. A fitting out quay 2133 feet long, with 32 feet depth of water, was located downstream of the building berths.
Production was gradually transferred there from the company’s existing naval yard at Elswick. In October 1913 Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, laid the keel of the first battleship, and by 1915 the yard employed some 3500 men. Like the Low Walker works, ownership of this company was subsequently transferred, successively to Sir W G Armstrong & Co. Ltd. and Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. Ltd. In 1928 the yard closed due to the scarcity of naval orders, and in the same year a partial merger with Vickers Ltd. of Barrow led to the yard’s transfer to the ownership of the new company, Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd. After six years of almost continuous closure, the yard re-opened in Autumn 1934 in response to an increase in orders leading up to, and during World War Two. Warship production during the war was on a large scale, with one battleship, four aircraft carriers, three cruisers, 24 destroyers, one monitor, 16 submarines and many motor and tank landing craft being completed.
Production at the Walker Naval Yard switched to merchant shipping during 1946, but naval warships and frigates continued to be produced and fitted-out in smaller numbers up to the mid-1980s. In January 1968 the works became the Walker yard of Swan Hunter Shipbuilders Ltd., being used mainly to fulfil orders for large container ships and bulk carriers. Following completion of the fitting-out of the Ark Royal in June 1985, the original shipyard offices were demolished (by 1988) and the yard put on a care and maintenance basis in preparation for its proposed sale for industrial redevelopment. There is now little surviving evidence for the shipyard {1}.

John Wigham Richardson, a Quaker, had gained considerable experience in ship construction whilst working in the drawing office at Hawthorns on the Tyne. He started up a yard at Wallsend in 1860 with family funds. His manager was the Scot, C J Denham, who became a partner in 1862. When first opened, the yard's workforce was only about 200, which turned out an annual average of about 2000 tons of shipping. An important order, leading to the production of a number of similar vessels, was that for a train ferry for the Prussian Government, the PS Ruhr in 1865.
During the 1870s, annual production at the yard increased to around 6,000 tons per year. In 1870, the first of a total of nine vessels for the Laverello Line was launched from the yard. Output again into the 1880s, with an average of 13,500 tons produced by the yard over the years 1880-84 and 25,000 tons produced in the boom year of 1883. The scale of vessels increased, also: In 1888, the steel-hulled passenger-liner Alfonso XII weighed just over 5,000 tons. This was not much short of the total annual production of the yard in the early 1870s.
With the depression in the shipbuilding industry over the mid 1880s, the massive production total of 1883 was not surpassed until 1896. By 1889, however, the yard had produced 178 ships, totalling more than 200,000 tons and had sold these vessels to more than 60 different customers, many of them abroad.
In 1903, the Neptune Yard was amalgamated with Swan Hunter. Upgrading of the facility had already been envisaged over the late 1890s and was mooted constantly over the next decade, but few significant changes actually occurred. Despite this, the thirteen years from 1901-13 saw Swan Hunter with the amalgamated Neptune Yard achieve an annual average output of 93,000 tons, 'a feat unequalled by any other firm in the world.' (Clarke 1997, 222 vol 1).
Map Evidence
Second Edition Ordnance Survey
This survey shows the Neptune Yard with its new boiler works, the latter set up in the early 1880s to the north of Hunter’s Quay Metal Extracting Works and to the south of the Tyne Pontoons and Dry Docks (SMR No. 2202). The core of the yard lies to the south of Hunter’s Quay and has subsumed a number of earlier yards (SMR Nos. 4208, 4217, 4218). Scattered over the river frontage of the yard are at least six building berths or slips.
Third Edition Ordnance Survey
The boiler works has been extended to the south and a new engine works section has been added. A major new set of building slips lies to the south of the Boiler and Engine Works
Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey
No significant alterations {1}. 2011 the dry docks were photographed ahead of infilling and redevelopment on the site. Docks 1, 2 and 3 were recorded. Dock dates to the second half of the 19th century (c.1860s) while docks 2 & 3 were established in the early 20th century {3}.

A yard was opened by C A Schlesinger (a former Stephenson's apprentice) and F B Davies (who trained at Mitchells and worked for the company in India for four years) in Wallsend in 1863. Two sailing ships were launched before their first steamer SS Llandaff was launched in 1865. The yard remained in operation for over 30 years and produced a total of 167 vessels including, in 1868, the SS Kielder Castle, the first Schlesinger Davies vessel of over 1000 tons.
Davies bought Schlesinger out of the yard before 1881. The company started to fail as ship construction nationally fell in the early 1890s and finally closed in 1893. In 1897, the yard was bought by Swan Hunter for the construction of floating dry docks. The first steel self-docking floating gravity dock was built there in the same year.
Map Evidence
Second Edition Ordnance Survey
Yard extends from the line of the old Coxlodge Waggonway in the south-west to the swan Hunter Yard in the north-east. The yard contains as many as seven building berths or slips. The north-eastern corner of the yard is densely packed with structures. Rail lines run from the buildings to the riverside at the eastern and western edges of the yard.
Third Edition Ordnance Survey,
The old Schlesinger Davies yard, now subsumed within Swan, Hunter, is almost entirely taken up by the massive building berths for the construction of the TS Mauretania.
Due to increased orders at his Low Walker Yard, Mitchell arranged for his two senior managers (Coulson and Cook) to open a new shipyard at St Peter's in 1871. In 1873, the business moved to a site of over six acres in Wallsend, adjacent to the Schlesinger-Davies Yard (SMR No.???). In 1874, Mitchell took full control of the yard and placed it under the control of Charles Sheriton Swan, operating as C S Swan and Co. During his five years in charge the yard produced over 30 vessels, amounting to 30,000 tons. In 1883, land was purchased from an adjacent alkali works, and the East Yard was created.
In 1879, Charles Swan was killed in an accident on board a steamer travelling back from Russia.
In 1880, George Hunter joined the Wallsend Yard and became the managing partner, in a company now titled C S Swan and Hunter. At the start of the 1880s, around 700 people were employed in the yard. 20, 000 tons of shipping was turned out in the boom year of 1883. Over the same year, land was purchased from an adjacent alkali works, and the East Yard was created. . With this increased capacity, production greatly increased: in 1889, for instance, 28,000 tons of shipping was launched from the yard. By this time, C S Swan and Hunter were responsible for 10% of the total output from the Tyne, in third place behind Palmer's and Armstrong-Mitchell.
In 1895, C S Swan and Hunter was formed into a private limited company. The yard was now employing about 2000 men and facilities in the East Yard were about to be upgraded with the installation of two glass-roofed building-berths. In 1897, work began on the SS Ultonia, the first vessel for the Cunard Line. Building in the covered berths began in 1900.
In 1903, Swan-Hunter and J Wigham Richardson's Neptune Yard were merged, as preparatory groundwork for the bid to construct Swan Hunter's Ship No. 735; the TS Mauretania.
The merger of Wigham Richardson Ltd and C.S. Swan and Hunter Ltd in 1903 occurred partly because a preliminary contract for a new Transatlantic liner for Cunard was tying up much of Swan Hunter’s capital and resources. Two new larger berths of 750 ft had to be constructed, which came to be the famous gantry crane berths fitted with 7 electric gantry cranes and roofed with glass. They were considered Tyneside landmarks for over 60 years. Further modernisation included new machine tools for punching, planing and countersinking.
The output of the two yards was now combined and Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd consisted of nearly 80 acres and a continuous river frontage of 4000 ft. The company concentrated on building cargo-liners and tankers, tanker sizes increasing in size from 10,000 dwt in 1903 to 15,500 dwt in 1913 when the San Fraterno became the largest tanker in the world. The company also developed new designs for train and passenger ferries.
During WWI the yard built 55 warships of 1000,000 tons and merchant construction of 290,588 grt including passenger liners, cargo liners, icebreakers, tankers, cable ships and floating docks.
Due to the yards ability to build any type of ship it was virtually the only yard that managed to stay open during the Depression. At this time almost every man was without work and in 1933 the complete tonnage from the Tyne was only 11,033 grt. Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson had the majority of this work. Over the next few years the yard continued to operate below capacity, but by the latter half of the thirties a renewed demand for oil meant and increase In orders for tankers. Tramps were also back in demand, with Hopemount shipping Co. (90% owned by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd) ordering seven as grain carriers. Further to this was the continuous orders from the Admiralty for whom they built 6 Destroyers over the next three years.
At the outbreak of WWII the yard had extensive orders from private owners, for whom the company built 55 ships during the war, this was alongside large scale orders for warships.
By the end of the war the yards extended over 80 acres, including 4000 ft of river frontage, seventeen building berths up to 1000 ft, and three dry-docks.
After the war the company returned to the construction of tankers, which represented over one-third of their output until they amalgamated with other yards in 1968. By the sixties they were building ‘supertankers’ which had a deadweight of up to 117270 compared to an earlier supertanker Velutina, launched in 1950 which had a deadweight of 28220.

Mitchisons Ship Repair Yard was founded in 1919, on a site which had previously been known as Fairs Boat Yard or Anderson’s Slipway. Mitchison’s repair yard was taken over in 1955 by James Burness and Co. of London and refitted for ship construction, concentrating on tugs, trawlers and other small vessels.

In 1964, the yard was closed and taken over by Friars Goose Marina Management Group. The yard is, today, within the marina development at Friars Goose.

First Edition Ordnance Survey 1858, Sheet ??
Not seen

Second Edition Twenty Five Inches to One Mile Ordnance Survey 1999, Sheet ??
One slip, projecting obliquely downstream over mudflats. No obvious structures

Third Edition Twenty Five Inches to One Mile Ordnance Survey 1912, Sheet XCV.13
Little apparent change

Fourth Edition Six Inches to One Mile Ordnance Survey 1924, Sheet??
No change. Not resurveyed? {1} The slipway and yard was founded in 1919. It was extended to envelope the old Friar's Goose chemical works in 1921. In the 1920s the building of wooden sailing ships ceased and construction transferred to steel plated tugs, trawlers and purse seiners. In the mid 1950s Mitchinson's started to build a new trawler by Sir D Burney. The yard was taken over by James Burness and Co of London and shipbuilding commenced in 1955. The yard closed in 1964 {2}.

Shown as 'disused' on second edition OS map. The aluminium factory used the Curt Netto process to produce aluminium from cryolite used sodium. It was run by the Alliance Aluminium Company in the 1880s. Within two years, the Hall-Heroult process was adapted, which used electricity instead of sodium. In 1907 the Aluminium Corporation started to use this process throughout England. They built a new aluminium factory at Wallsend to replace the previous one.

Shown on second edition OS map.

Shown on second edition OS map.

Slipway shown on 1st edition Ordnance Survey map 25" to one mile survey.

In 1852, Charles Mitchell, from Aberdeen, set up a shipbuilding yard next to Coutts’ shipyard at Low Walker on the River Tyne. The first vessel launched from the yard was the passenger ship Havilah in 1854. In the same year, Mitchell married Ann Swan, the daughter of a Newcastle businessman. His two brothers-in–law, Charles and Henry Swan, both subsequently played parts in developing his shipbuilding concerns; Henry eventually became managing partner at the Low Walker yard, whilst Charles took over the management of his yard at Wallsend.

A variety of passenger, freight and military vessels were constructed at the Low Walker Yard, including a large number for Russian, German and other international owners. Over the 1860s and 70s a link developed between the Low Walker yard and the armaments company of William Armstrong of Elswick (established in 1847 to produce cranes and other hydraulic machinery, but soon specialising in ordnance). In 1867, the first naval vessel, the Royal Naval Gunboat Staunch was built at Low Walker and armed with Armstrong’s 9’’ Muzzle-loading gun. This was the first of 28 RN gunboats launched from the yard, all armed by Armstrong’s. In 1882 the two companies amalgamated as a limited liability company under the name of Sir W G Armstrong, Mitchell & Co. Ltd. The first joint vessel produced by the yards’ was the Chilean Cruiser Esmeralda. Launched in 1884 , the ship was designed by George Rendel, Managing Director of the Elswick Yard. She was constructed at Low Walker. Thereafter, the Low Walker Yard concentrated largely on merchant shipping, particularly the new bulk oil carrier, the oil tanker: The first of this type of vessel, the Gluckauf, was launched from this yard from 1885. In 1896 the company changed its name to Sir W G Armstrong & Co. Ltd. and the following year, during a period of British naval and armaments expansion, amalgamated with a Manchester armaments manufacturer, Sir Joseph Whitworth & co. Ltd. to become Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. Ltd.

During the First World War a variety of tankers and other merchant ships was produced, and orders were numerous into the 1920s, with a significant upturn in 1928/9. However, the Depression forced the closure of the yard (along with the Dobson and Tyne Iron Yards also under the Armstrong-Whitworth name) in 1931. The yard re-opened in 1942 for the production of tramps. The Low Walker yard, by then under the name of Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. (Shipbuilders) Ltd., went into voluntary liquidation in 1956.

Map Evidence

First Edition Ordnance Survey, Sheet ///
No shipyard present

Second Edition Ordnance Survey, Sheet ///
Not accessed

Third Edition Ordnance Survey, Sheet ///
Six slips run obliquely to the river. There are substantial buildings in the northern area of the yard, with a travelling-crane positioned along the northern wharf area.

Fourth Edition Ordnance Survey, Sheet ///
The yard has now been extended northwards over the site of the abandoned Walker Waggonway Staiths and the wharf has been extended northwards into this area. The six oblique slips remain in the southern half of the site. Substantial new buildings have been set up to the north of the slips.

Much repaired railway bridge carrying the NER (SMR 4895). Stonework survives largely intact but needs graffiti removing.