New Heritage Trails Celebrate Newcastle’s Diverse History
Two new virtual heritage trails have been launched, which celebrate Newcastle’s rich and diverse past.
Created by Historic England and the African Lives in Northern England Project, the trails for schoolchildren reveal that Africans and other diverse groups have lived in and visited Newcastle since the 18th century and show how they helped shape the city’s past and present.
There are many plaques, memorials and monuments in Newcastle, but the only one to commemorate a black person in the whole city is in Summerhill Square, which memorialises the social reform campaigner Frederick Douglass.
Helping to address this overlooked part of Newcastle’s history, the trails explore Africans with a link to the city, from icons such as Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr to little-known figures such as William Fifefield, who made his living as a boatman on the Tyne in the late 18th century.
The trails also take in buildings including City Hall, the Royal Victoria Infirmary and West Indies House, a colonial office hostel set up to house colonial (black) seamen stranded in Tyneside at the outbreak of the Second World War.
Developed as part of Historic England’s Heritage Schools programme, one trail covers the central part of Newcastle City Centre, and the other focuses on the northern area of the City Centre.
The immense contribution of black African, black Caribbean and many other diverse ethnic groups to the rich history of the North East should not be missing from stories of our past. That’s why these new heritage trails for schoolchildren are so vital. They will help us tell the real story of our great, vibrant city and our region, to which so many communities have contributed.
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