Ballast Hills & Ouseburn School Traditional Cache
Phil100: Unfortunately this cache is no longer accessible so I am having to archive it. [:(]
Ballast Hills & Ouseburn School
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
In the days when sailing ships, particularly the colliers carrying coal from Newcastle, returned to port, if they didn’t have a return cargo, it was necessary for them to carry material such as sand and gravel as ballast. This waste material was then dumped before the ships were re-loaded with their next cargo. One such site was on the east bank of the Ouseburn where it meets the river Tyne.
As a port, Tyneside attracted a large number of migrants, particularly Scottish Presbyterians as well as Baptists, Quakers, Methodists and Independents. Although they were entitled to use the parish churchyards, they preferred to perform their own burial services and the Ballast Hills area was adopted by Protestant non-conformists as a place to bury their dead. Burials may have commenced as by the early 1600s but it was certainly established by 1708, the date of the earliest recorded gravestone.
The Ballast Hills burial ground became the most important burial place in Newcastle in the early 19th century with an average of about 500 interments a year – more than all the burials in the Newcastle churchyards together. Burials continued until the last recorded burial on 18th September 1853 when it was closed. The remaining gravestones were cleared in 1930 when the area was laid out as a playground and many of the stones were laid down to form a footpath around the area.
The co-ordinates will take you to a corner where a number of gravestones, particularly of non-conformist church ministers, have been left standing. This is next to a large red-brick building, built as Ouseburn School.
Ouseburn School was designed by a local architect, Frank West Rich, and opened in 1893 to accommodate 928 scholars. The distinctive, oriental-style, corner towers formed part of the school’s ventilation system. The school closed in 1967 and, after having served for a few years as a stationery store for Newcastle City Council, it re-opened in 1993 as the Quayside Business Development Centre.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
N ovg bs n ernpu sebz Rqjneq Oryy'f ohevny cynpr.
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures