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Killingworth is a town in North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, England, within the historic county of Northumberland.
Killingworth was built as a new town in the 1960s, next to Killingworth Village, which existed for centuries before the new town was built. Other nearby villages include Forest Hall, West Moor and Backworth.
Killingworth is linked to the rest of Tyne and Wear by bus routes. The town is not on the Tyne and Wear Metro network; its nearest Metro stations are Palmersville and Benton.
The town of Killingworth in Australia is named after the British original because of its extensive coal mines.
In an episode of the architecture series Grundy's Wonders on Tyne Tees, John Grundy deemed Killingworth's former British Gas Research Centre to be the best industrial building in the North East.
The Doctor Who episode titled "The Mark of the Rani" depicted Killingworth in the 19th century, with the Sixth Doctor in search of George Stephenson, after the Doctor's arch-enemy The Master attempts to hijack the Industrial Revolution. Filming of the episode took place, however, in the 19th-century mining village at Blists Hill Open Air Museum in Ironbridge.
Documentary evidence for Killingworth starts in 1242 when it is recorded as part of the land held by Roger de Merlay III. There were nine recorded taxpayers in 1296, falling to eight by 1312. In a survey of the township dated 1373 listed sixteen tenements (land holdings).
This new town centre consisted of pre-cast concrete houses, with millions of small crustacean shells unusually embedded into their external walls, 5 to 10-storey apartment, offices, industrial units and service buildings, which often consisted of artistic non-functional characteristics, shops and residential multi-storey car parks, interconnected by ramps and . These made up a deck system of access to shopping and other facilities, employing the Sweden Skarne method of construction.
Originally named Killingworth Township, the latter part was quickly dropped through lack of colloquial use. Killingworth is referred to as 'Killy' by many residents of the town and surrounding areas.
Around 1964, during the Land reclamation of the derelict coal mine sites, a lake south of the town centre was created; spoil heaps were leveled, seeded and planted with semi-mature trees. Today, , and local wildlife live around the two lakes, which span the main road into Killingworth. The lake is kept well stocked with fish and an angling club and model boating club regularly use it.
In 1814 George Stephenson, enginewright at the colliery, built his first locomotive Blücher with the help and encouragement of his manager, Nicholas Wood, in the colliery workshop behind his house 'Dial Cottage' on Lime Road. This locomotive could haul of coal up a hill at . It was used to tow coal wagons along the wagonway from Killingworth to the Wallsend coal staithes. Although Blücher did not survive long, it provided Stephenson with the knowledge and experience to build better locomotives for use both at Killingworth and elsewhere. Later he would build the famous Rocket in his locomotive works in Newcastle.
At the same time Stephenson was developing his own version of the miner's safety lamp, which he demonstrated underground in Killingworth pit a month before Humphry Davy presented his design to the Royal Society in London in 1815. Known as the Geordie lamp it was to be widely used in the North-east in place of the Davy lamp.
The track gauge of the Killingworth tramway was .The Rocket Men, by Robin Jones, p33; Mortons Media Group. Other names were Killingworth Colliery railway, Killingworth Railway and Killingworth wagonway
The houses in most of the Garths in West Bailey (the west of Killingworth) were built of concrete and had flat roofs, but around 1995 the Local Housing Association modernised these houses by adding roof pitch. They renewed fencing, built new brick sheds and relocated roads and pathways.
The lowest remaining numbered Garth is Garth Four in West Bailey and the highest is Garth Thirty-Three in East Bailey aka Hadrian court. The housing estate formally known as Garth 21 was built as a private estate with detached and semi-detached 3 and 4 bed room homes.
Many Local Authority Homes were purchased by the tenants, some of whom still reside in the houses that were built in the 1960s.
The most eye-catching and radical aspect of the township was the 3-tier housing estate called Killingworth Towers – apartment blocks built in the early 1970s. Tenanted by the local authority, they were made of dark grey concrete blocks and were named Bamburgh, Kielder and Ford Tower etc., after castles. They consisted of a combination of 1, 2 and 3 storey homes built on top of each other rising to 10 storeys in some towers, with tremendous views.
The estate was originally designed to mimic a medieval castle with an outer wall and inner keep connected to lifts and rubbish chutes by ramps and a two-tier walkway (see gallery). This design could be seen on maps of the Towers imprinted on the cast-iron drain covers within the estate. The walkways all led to a elevated walkway leading straight through the mostly covered Killingworth Citadel Shopping Centre. This communal configuration was experimental and somewhat typical of the time.
Grating was retrofitted to prevent risk takers sliding down the high girders holding up the walkways. Cast iron grilles were erected to stop transit by over-exuberant youths racing bikes and skateboards along the smooth walkway "racetrack". Dogs fouled the walkways, rubbish chutes were blocked, vandals damaged communal bins, stairwells, lifts and multi-storey residential car parks joined the list of problems. The Towers were never widely popular and were demolished in 1987.
The last remaining structure, the walkway to the shops, was eventually demolished as it served no purpose after the Towers' demise, but it stood alone for 10 years until funds were found to bring it down.
The land is now occupied by two new estates of privately owned homes built by Cussins Homes and Barratt Homes.
The shopping centre included Dewhurst butchers, Greggs bakery and , but it was demolished in the 1990s. The Puffing Billy Pub was built on a bridge over the road.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Morrisons shopping complex (containing Morrisons supermarket) became the commercial centre, while the former Woolco site stood as wasteland for more than a decade. In the early 2000s, Killingworth Centre, a modern shopping mall, was built there. Morrisons moved into a new purpose-built store.
Over the years, the office space became vacant and, like the former Woolco site, was disused through the 1990s. The building was reduced in height, remodernised, reopened and renamed White Swan Centre. The name White Swan was chosen from suggestions provided by local school children and reflects the swans found on the local lake. The White Swan Centre was built to house local services previously provided in demolished buildings that had been attached to the high-level shopping precinct. For example, a doctors' surgery and library and a small gym was housed in the White Swan centre as the swimming pool and sports centre had also been demolished. The new Lakeside swimming pool and sports centre was built alongside the lake next to George Stephenson High School.
Killingworth Bus Station is located adjacent to the Killingworth Centre. It is served by Arriva North East, Go North East, and Stagecoach North East with routes to Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland.
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