On Bedlington.uk Now...

Question for Councillor Sanderson: Have you ever been in a modern data centre? If you have, the one thing you'd have noticed is the distinct lack of human beings. Yes, a sprinkling of security staff and the odd cleaner, but thousands of jobs?!!! Though... maybe he means Chinese jobs building the gear, and remote administration, and supervisory jobs in the SE? Are they going to duct all the waste heat into local homes to provide free super-clean central heating, so providing a REAL benefit to the community? Now, THAT would be worth having, and any politico worth his/her salt should be pushing for such a scheme.

So if the move for the QTS Data Center is successfull then Cambois will have a cloud hangiing over it for many years to come

Blackstone to Buy Britishvolt Site for Massive QTS Data Center Alamy https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/buildconstruction/blackstone-buy-britishvolt-site-massive-qts-data-center#close-modal

Britishvolt’s gigafactory site sold off in electric car blow The site that had been earmarked for the Britishvolt gigafactory has been bought by Blackstone Credit: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire US private equity investors have bought the site of what had been hoped would become Britain’s first electric car battery gigafactory in a blow to Britain’s net zero ambitions. Land in Cambois near Blyth in Northumberland had been expected to become the home of the £3.8bn Britishvolt factory before the company fell into administration last year. However, Northumberland County Council revealed it has sold the site to Blackstone, which plans to turn the site into a data centre. Britishvolt, which was backed by mining giant Glencore, collapsed with the loss of more than 200 jobs and had been in line for £100m in funding from the Government via its Automotive Transformation Fund. An Australian company, Recharge Industries, had promised to buy the site before itself being hit with a winding up petition. The Blackstone deal, for an undisclosed sum, comes after what receivers at Begbies Traynor Group described as a “complex” sales process for the 235-acre site. Northumberland County Council leader Cllr Glen Sanderson said Blackstone’s plans would lead to an investment of up to £10bn and support as many as 4,300 jobs. He said: “Driving growth and jobs is a key priority for this Council. Next week, Cabinet will consider this really unique opportunity for Northumberland which offers a huge boost to the regeneration and renaissance of the local area.”

Didn't one of those on the left used to be Wemyss (sp?), the wholesale confectioner, back in the mid 1950s? I can remember carting an unstable load of empty crisp tins there on my bogey as an infant. Yes, those packets of crisps with the little blue bag of salt used to come in oversized biscuit tins to keep them fresh. My motive was purely economic - to pocket the deposit on them. Mr Wemyss, however - god rest his soul - wasn't prepared to cough up the going rate, likely embossed on the tins, and all I got was a pittance (or maybe a few sweets) for my trouble. The sweets are long forgotten, but the bitterness lingers on - such is life! 🤣

The Nissan supplier is piddling compared with other international efforts, so their use of "giga" probably raises some chuckles in international circles. I seriously doubt whether any of the other UK efforts will get off the ground, as there's already oversupply. The TYPE of battery matters enormously these days, and by the time you ramp, it's very easy to find that there's no market for what you are producing at any price. We've seen this before in our area. Remember the Siemens DRAM factory off the spine road. By the time they were able to produce 1M bit chips in volume, the market had already moved on to 4 Mbit and the factory was a very expensive white elephant. The speed of innovation in batteries at the moment is even faster than that!

@stustep using a B&W version of @James's early 19th century photo I have added some old and new images confirming it.

Very few changes have been made to the building. In the photo, taken early 1900's, the Gibson family property is the first building on the left.

@stustep I have no idea what changes the building has gone through. I wonder if @HIGH PIT WILMA can remember any?

Thanks for this that's brilliant, yeah i had read the plaque and that's what initially got me to thinking exactly what was the house used for prior to the conversion... it seems its gone through a few connotations before 2004 when it was changed over. Obviously james Gibson used the premses as her was linked to the provident institute answering the blue plaques statement of the family being involved with finance. Thank you

@stustep didn't find anything in th Evan Martin booklet on the Bedlington Iron Works (but I did just scan through it ) I did a Google of 'Gibson Bedlington nailers' and there is one directory that shows Ann Gibson as the owner of the nail manufacturing business With a bit of maniplation and I extracted, via screen shots, some extracts from the directory and then with a bit of clarting Iclagged some bits together to make a couple of pages, the cover page and page 897 on Bedlingtonshire :- Yon can seen the directory shows the name Gibson Ann twice. And then I download @Maggie/915's photo of the blue plaque just to show what we have been checking on

A Telegraph heading this morning says: The world stands on the brink of all-out war According to the Democrats and other miscellaneous leftists, Trump would surely start WW3! For people living in the real world, he was actually the only president in recent history that DIDN'T start a conflict. The death toll in Ukraine is likely well North of 400,000 already, and to that you need to add all the other miscellaneous deaths throughout the world that Obama's semi-senile (and thoroughly corrupt) puppet has caused. What a price to pay in order to protect the feelings of deluded idiots from "mean tweets"! November can't come soon enough!

Thank you all for this

dosen't give any more info than the reference CL has pointed to but the Northumberland County Council has the 'Northumberland Extensive Urban Survey' document and paragraph 6.7 has :- 6.7 Chain and Mail Manufacturers and Ironmongers There is an account book for Gibson Bros. of Bedlington chain and mail manufacturers and ironmongers dated 1853-1923. This account book lists orders from customers but does not establish the location of the works, which may have been within the Bedlington Iron Works. Link to it is :- https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/NorthumberlandCountyCouncil/media/Planning-and-Building/Conservation/Archaeology/Bedlington.pdf

PS Have you read John Dawson's topic 'The last of the Nailers' in History Hollow?

Hi @stustep and welcome to the forum. The Gibson nailers get a mention in Graces Guide https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Bedlington_Ironworks where you can read that: "During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the splitting mills became disused at the Bedlington works, and soon after that all the nailers shops, apart from one, disappeared from the town. The last shop belonged to the Gibson family and can be traced back to the beginning of the last century. Mr. Gibson says he was forced to finally pull down the shutters of his shop in 1930. He has since been known in Bedlington and district as "The last of the Nailers". Hope this is of use to you.

@John Fox (foxy) & @Mal I am assuming the council will have records of the Blue Plaques - do you know who to contact at the council offices? I don't know if English Heritage are sent all info on Blue Plaques (to me). @stustep - I know @Andy Millne added an entry into the bedlington Timeline :- @Jammy posted in a topic 'Halfpenny Woods' create by @Canny lass and mentioned the iron Works and in his comment was this bit about nails :- Something else that has me thinking. Which way were the completed steam engines moved from the works. I suppose they could have travelled towards the Kitty Brewster or beyond to flatter ground and joined the rail network in the Bates pit area. The furnace bridge is an arch but is flat on the top so the engines could be wheeled/dragged across it with teams of horses. Then there would be the problem of getting them up to the bank top. I doubt horses could pull them up but perhaps a stationary steam engine could pull them up but where would they go from there. There was a rail track from the iron works that ran along the edge of the river towards the black bridge. This track was paid for by the Iron Works and connected with the Barrington pit track that brought coal to the riverside for transfer onto barges. The iron works then had coal delivered directly to the works. I'm not sure if the trains went along that track because it was probably not a standard gauge track and was used to carry tubs of coal. The trains could have been loaded onto a barge though that would be risky and where would they be off loaded. I'm a bit puzzled. There is a stone block wall next to the furnace bridge which was probably reinforcing the land behind it and was used to tie up barges bringing supplies to the Iron Works or taking some of the other goods produced at the Iron Works. The Iron works also produced 100,000's of stamped nails that were transported all over the UK and the world. I'll have a look at the Evan Martin booklet - Bedlington iron & Engine Wporks 1736-1867' and see if the name 'Gibson' gets mentioned.

Hi We are moving to bedlington as we have just bought a property on front street. The property in question has a blue plaque on the wall outside (Gibsons who i believe were a family who made nails) and I've been told used to be a wholesalers and such over the years prior to becoming a home in the early 2000's, id be really interested if anyone has any old photographs of 36 front street (opposite the Black Bull) prior to it becoming a home. thanks