All language subtitles for puorGVM.CAA.462x.VTDH.p0801.egdirB.enyT.ehT.6fo2.1.seireS.segdirB.tsetaerG.sniatirB

Britain's iconic bridges,
spanning our most dramatic landscapes

have not only linked our island,
but made it great.

These are the bridges that are known
around the world,

built by visionaries
like Stephenson and Brunel,

who are famous, even today.

Look at this!

From the banks of the Tyne
to the mighty Thames,

from the Firth of Forth
to the Menai Strait...

I'm on a journey to discover
how those great bridges were built...

Here we go.

And the sweat and sacrifice
that went into their constructions.

Stopping traffic.

I'll uncover the huge egos,
flawed geniuses and jealous rivalries

behind their creation.

It's as if he'd been airbrushed
from the whole story.

These are Britain's Greatest Bridges.

This is the mouth of the River Tyne,

but over 100km long,
it's the artery that pumped life

into two of England's
greatest industrial centres -

Gateshead on the south,
and Newcastle on the north side.

Once, the Tyne was the most important
industrial river in the land.

Millions of tonnes of coal
would travel down it,

powering the rest of the country.

While along its banks,
great shipyards constructed the ships

that helped build the British Empire

and put the North East on the map.

But if you're a Geordie,

it's not the River Tyne that
reminds you of home, it's this...

the Tyne Bridge!

Eight thousand tonnes of solid steel
and granite

that dominate the skyline.

It might not be one of
the biggest bridges in the world

but it's definitely
one of the most famous.

This is such a striking piece of
civil engineering on the landscape.

It's just stunning.

For the locals, the Geordies,

this bridge symbolises everything
that's great about the North East,

because the Tyne Bridge
is truly a local bridge.

To understand why the Geordies
love this bridge so much

you only have to look out
across the landscape.

Almost everything that built
this bridge came from here.

The refinery where all
the steel was made

was just an hour down the coast,
at Redcar.

The iron ore was mined
from the Cleveland Hills,

just 40 miles south from here.

And the coal used to smelt it

would have probably been mined just
outside Gateshead, just over there.

And the skilled labour that built it
over a period of three years

all came direct
from the Tyneside shipyards.

This is a bridge more than any other

that embodies the story
of the North East.

And the rise...

and fall of one of our country's
great industrial centres.

Even now,
90 years after its construction,

the Tyne Bridge stands as symbol of
the pride and passion of the Geordies

who built it and live with it.

I absolutely love the Tyne Bridge.

It reminds us of home
and we just love it.

I think it's the iconic image
of Tyneside.

Something that the North East
is very, very proud of.

The Tyne Bridge is by far the
most famous bridge over the river.

It's a bridge that re-wrote
the engineering rulebook,

and an icon men risked their lives
to build.

But it wasn't the first bridge
to be built here.

Back in the 1920s,
when construction started,

Newcastle already had two bridges.

The advent of trains in the 1840s

had brought Robert Stephenson's
High Level Bridge.

It was built for what had become
the London and North Eastern Railway

and the trains
still thunder across today.

But it also carried trams and
pedestrians on this road deck here,

beneath the trains.

And just a little further downstream
is the Swing Bridge.

Both did exactly what they were
designed to do -

get people and traffic across
the Tyne

without stopping shipping
on the river.

But with the Swing Bridge
opening almost 20 times a day,

Newcastle really needed a new bridge.

But it wasn't queuing Geordies

that finally prompted
the building of the Tyne Bridge,

it was a far bigger problem.

These great arches have been
linking Newcastle and Gateshead

for almost 90 years now

but it's not just a bridge
joining two sides of the river.

For all its magnificence,
stone and steel work,

this bridge was, in fact,
a political bridge,

built in part to keep the country
from falling to pieces.

In 1918, when World War I ended,

the men of the North East
returned from the trenches

to what they hoped would be a land
fit for heroes.

Instead, many of them
found themselves out of work

and barely able to feed
their families.

The war had caused
a global downturn in trade.

The coal mines cut wages

and there were few new orders
for the shipyards.

By the early 1920s,

over a third of the Tyneside
shipyards had closed down.

And unemployment among the Regent
ship builders was as high as 40%.

As protests swept
the rest of the country,

the government of the day
was terrified trouble was brewing

in the North East.

In a bid to protect one of the
country's most important industries,

the first Labour prime minister,
Ramsay MacDonald,

came up with a radical plan -

building the Tyne Bridge.

By using the skills of Tyneside's
unemployed riveters and steelworkers,

the bridge would serve
as a massive employment scheme,

not just keeping families
out of poverty,

but keeping alive those essential
shipbuilding skills it was hoped

would once again be needed when
the great recession was finally over.

To make sure the plan happened,

the government put up over
half the cost of the new bridge -

around £40 million in today's money.

With money on the table,
the local council acted fast.

The entire design and contracting
process taking just ten months.

The bidding process to win the job

became a battle between two of
the North East's industrial giants.

A favourite to win was

the engineering firm
of Armstrong Whitworth,

then one the biggest employers
in Newcastle.

Armstrongs, who'd already built
the Swing Bridge there,

bid for the contract to build it,

but their bid of nearly £750,000
was just too expensive.

Instead the contract
went to Dorman Long.

Based just a few miles south
of Newcastle, in Middlesbrough,

Dorman Long was one of the biggest
steel manufacturers in the world.

But Dorman Long wasn't
just a steel manufacturer,

it was a construction company too,

using its steel to build bridges
throughout the Empire.

But despite its vast experience
building big and complicated bridges

in far flung places
like Egypt and Zimbabwe,

the Tyne Bridge was to be the steel
company's greatest ever challenge.

And the reason was down to
Dorman Long's original competitor

for the construction contract -
Armstrong Whitworth.

Central to this industrial empire,
founded by William Armstrong,

was one of the most important
munitions works in the land.

Supplying huge guns
to the British Army and Navy,

Armstrong Whitworth was situated
just upstream

from where the Tyne Bridge
was to be built,

and nothing was allowed to interfere

with boats heading to and from
the factory,

not even the much-needed Tyne Bridge.

So Dorman Long's engineers were faced
with a massive problem -

how to build an 8,000 tonne
steel bridge 170 feet in the air,

without affecting the river below.

The solution would push the company's
engineers to their limits.

In 1925, building Newcastle's
iconic Tyne Bridge

forced its engineers
to rewrite the rulebook.

The incredible 8,000 tonne
steel structure

was built using techniques
never tried before

and the reason lay in
the Tyne River itself.

Although the aftermath of World War I
had triggered a nationwide recession,

the River Tyne was still a
vital artery for the nation's trade.

And because that river traffic
was so important,

Parliament ruled that it
couldn't be disrupted in any way.

If the constructors, Dorman Long,
were to succeed,

they needed to find a whole new
approach to bridge building.

So how do you build a bridge like
that, without clogging the river up,

full of barges to hoist
the steel up from?

Well, the clue is at the end
of the arches on each side.

The entire weight of the arches
rest on these round bearings.

In effect, a simple hinge

which allowed the whole bridge to be
built from above, rather than below.

Thick steel cables ran from the top
of the arches

to great winches on the banks,

holding them up as they were
gradually built outwards

across the river.

20-ton cranes were erected
on top of the start of each arch,

lifting beams from the bank
and placing them out over the river,

extending the arch.

More beams were then positioned
for the flat deck beneath.

And once a whole section
had been finished,

the crane would move out
further along the arch,

further out over the river and the
whole process would start again.

It was an engineering triumph.

And it's led many Geordies to believe
that the building of the Tyne Bridge

was a dress rehearsal
for an even bigger project

on the other side of the planet...

Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge.

They copied ours.

This was here first and, yeah,

as a city, we're very,
very proud of it.

It's as famous, if not more famous,
than the Sydney Harbour Bridge,

I would've thought,
which is three times the size,

but we think ours is
the better of the two.

But is there really any truth
in the idea

that the two bridges are connected?

Superficially, they do look similar.

Both are so-called 'through arches',

with the bridge deck going through

the arch, rather than on top.

Both are constructed

from great steel girders

and both were built

at roughly the same time.

But is that just a coincidence?

To find out, I've travelled
200 miles south,

to the Institution of Civil Engineers
in London.

Deep in its vaults is one

of the largest engineering archives
on the planet.

It contains thousands of documents
and plans

from engineering projects
around the world.

Some going back to the dawn
of the Industrial Revolution.

So if there is a link
between these two great bridges,

I should find it here.

From the archives
I've managed to dig out

an original plan
of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

And this is a copy of a plan
of the Tyne Bridge

that I've brought with me.

And straightaway, you can see
there's an obvious similarity.

They've both got the big steel arch,
two towers at each end,

and the flat suspended section.

But have a closer look

and it seems that connection
goes a little deeper,

because both bridges
were manufactured

by Dorman Long and Company
of Middlesbrough.

There it is clearly on both plans.

In fact, Dorman Long also produced
the materials for both bridges,

shipping over 42,000 tonnes
of specialist steel

all the way to Australia,
for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

But that doesn't answer the question
of which one came first and whether,

as many Geordies believe,

the design of the Sydney Harbour
Bridge was based on the Tyne Bridge.

Look back in the corners
of the drawings though,

and we can see two different firms
of engineers who drew up the plans,

the bridge designers.

Here, for the Tyne Bridge,

we've got Mott, Hay and Anderson.

And for Sydney Harbour Bridge,

it's Douglas Fox and Partners.

Now, dig a little further

and there's another name on the
Tyne Bridge drawings, Ralph Freeman.

Ralph Freeman,
later Sir Ralph Freeman,

was one of Britain's greatest
structural engineers

and THE man to go to if you were
planning to build a massive bridge.

Now, we know at the time Freeman was
working for Douglas Fox and Partners,

the company who designed
the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

His name appearing on the Tyne Bridge
drawings at least suggests

he was a consulting engineer
on the Tyne Bridge project.

So Freeman could be the reason

as to why these two bridges
look so similar.

But, personally, I doubt it.

Impressive as both bridges are,
they're far from unique.

20 years before the Tyne Bridge
was built,

New York had this.

The Hell Gate Bridge -

one of many so-called through arch
bridges built around 1900.

But if you really want to find
the inspiration for the Tyne Bridge,

you don't have to cross an ocean,

you simply have to travel
a few miles upstream.

It's a steel arch bridge called
the Wylam Railway Bridge.

Built in 1874, almost 50 years
before the Tyne Bridge was designed,

it's virtually identical to its
cousin, just ten miles downstream.

And key to both bridges' success

is one of man's greatest
engineering successes...

the arch.

Arch bridges have been built around
the world for thousands of years,

made out of either wood or stone,
like this one.

But the Wylam Bridge was one
of the first to be built of metal,

hundreds of tonnes of it.

Keeping the whole thing up
is the principal of the arch,

something bridge builders have
relied on since before Roman times.

Let me explain what I mean.

And the materials used to build
an arch bridge,

be it wood, concrete, steel or stone,

are all relatively strong
in compression,

which means they're good at resisting
forces trying to squeeze them.

Now, if I build a very simple
model beam bridge here.

Here is my beam on my two supports
on the side of the canoe.

If I apply a force, a load,
onto the top, the beam bends.

The two ends come up and the middle
goes down and the whole beam bends.

And that bottom surface of the beam
is what's called being in tension.

It's being stretched.

If I kept pushing and kept pushing,

it would bend and stretch so much
until it broke -

the bridge would fail.

Now, instead, if I restrain
the two ends and form an arch shape,

as I put load on the top there,
as I push down,

the material here is in compression.

It's resisting it well, as well. Agh!

So the load I push down
is carried out

through the curves of the arch

and down into our strong,
solid anchor points at each end.

And that's what makes an arch bridge
so strong.

Just like the Wylam Bridge,
the Tyne Bridge looks the way it does

because it exploits
the same ancient structure.

All the weight of the bridge
being passed along the arch,

down to the ground.

So as long as the ends of the arch
cannot move outward,

the arch will stay super strong.

This is the bottom
of the Tyne Bridge's towering arch,

here on the Newcastle side
of the river.

Thousands of tonnes of steel
supporting a good chunk

of Newcastle's busy traffic,
day and night.

But that traffic remains safe
above me because the ends of the arch

are supported by these anchor points,
the abutments,

wedged firmly into the bank itself

behind the stone cladding
of the tower here.

No matter how many lorries pass
above me, this bridge stands strong.

Back in 1925, it was those
great abutments that were

the first stage of the arch
to be built.

But as the bridge moved upwards,
things got a lot more complicated.

Its engineers having to devise
radical new construction techniques.

Building the bridge downwards
from the sky,

allowing the all-important river
traffic to flow freely underneath.

But the real heroes were the men
of the Tyne themselves.

Thousands of former shipyard workers
who risked life and limb

to create this engineering marvel.

Back then, there was no safety gear.

Your life depended on a steady sense
of balance and a good run of luck.

It was a tragedy waiting to happen.

And on the 18 February, 1928, it did.

For almost 90 years

the Tyne Bridge has been the symbol
of the North East.

The men who built it
were seen as heroes.

Their skills symbolising
the industrial might of the time.

For four years thousands of people
laboured to build this bridge,

working at heights of up to 200 feet,
without any protection whatsoever.

Deaths on constructions like this
were taken as part of the job,

but the Tyne Bridge seemed blessed.

The monkeys working up on the
high beams seemed invincible

and dozens of people would
regularly gather down below

to watch as they scampered about.

But just six days before
the great arch was completed,

those crowds saw something
they'd never forget.

According to the accounts
at the time,

and this is a newspaper article
from the Northern Daily Mail,

on the morning of Saturday
18 February, 1928,

a scaffold erector by the name of
Nathaniel Collins, aged just 33,

was walking along one of those beams

when he lost his footing and fell
into the river, some 175 feet below.

Incredibly, he surfaced alive
and was pulled out by a boatman

employed by Dorman Long
for exactly that purpose.

According to the newspapers,

Nathaniel Collins was
the 57th man who'd fallen in

and had had to be rescued,

but the only one who didn't recover
from his injuries.

His grandson, Bob Collins,
still lives in the city

and remembers the impact
Nathaniel's death had on the family.

Hello there. Hey, I'm Rob.

Bob. Hello there, Rob.
Nice to meet you.

Welcome, come on in. Thank you.

There's the grandfather, there.

Do you have some more photos
of Nathaniel?

Well, all I've got is...

Actually, there he is
in his Light Infantry uniform.

Wow.

This was from First World War?
Yes.

That was an article about
when he fell off...

There he is, Nathaniel, scaffolder...

Yes, scaffolder.

"Fell at about 175 feet
above the river"

"and watchers gasped as he
tumbled off the bridge."

His body hit the foot... That's
the bottom of the bridge there,

and bounced off that
and he went in the river.

But he died of a fractured skull...
Yeah.

And then the policemen
and one of the staff

came to tell my nanna in the
afternoon and that was that.

End of a life.

She was left
with four children to bring up

but she never married again.

She was...

She wasn't too fond of the bridge,
and that's a fact.

She hated the bridge as well, you
know, for what it did to the family.

Very sad.

That's very tragic, Bob. Yes.

But there was only one man killed
and that was him, unfortunately.

Yep.

So, how does it make you feel,

whenever you see the Tyne Bridge
or walk across it, even?

You think of him every time?
Yes. Every single time. Yeah.

Despite the fatality, work on
the Tyne Bridge continued at pace.

For three years, great cranes had
been inching out over the waters,

lifting 8,000 tonnes of steel
into place.

Finally, on 23 February, 1928,

just a few days after
Nathaniel Collins' death,

the last parts were lowered
into position.

But the gap was still not closed.

From the start of construction,

each half of the arch had been
held up by great cables

attached to winches at each side
of the bank.

Now those cables were slackened

and both halves pivoted
on their huge hinges until they met,

almost 200 feet above the Tyne.

From that moment on,
the bridge became self-supporting,

all its weight being taken down
through the hinges, onto each bank.

Today, the steel arches
over the river

are as solid as they were
90 years ago.

But building these massive arches...

was only half the story.

Now, this central span is 161 metres,

but on either side
are the approach bands,

each over 100 metres long,
and supported by steel pillars.

And building those was
almost as difficult

as building the bit over the river.

Just like the great arches,

building the approach roads
changed the way bridges were built.

Employing a revolutionary technique
called 'launching'.

This is Lombard Street, one
of the key areas of old Newcastle.

Now, these buildings were here
a good 60 years

before the bridge
was even thought about,

and the people living here
had no choice but to watch

as the huge approaches
slowly crept out

over the top of their homes.

As with the arches, the aim here was
to build the approaches

without disturbing
the businesses below.

And it's all down to the way
they were constructed.

Essentially,
they're two huge steel beams,

held apart by those
smaller cross pieces.

Like everything else on the bridge,
they were built on site.

This is where the ones
on the Gateshead side were built.

But instead of being built
on the ground,

these were built on massive rollers.

That meant the beams could be rolled
forward as they were constructed.

Literally, pushed out over the drop.

Imagine the scene -

a huge crane lifting steel sections
off railway wagons

and swinging them into place.

Dozens of men riveting them together
in real time.

And here, a powerful winch,
operated by ten men,

cranking it round
and pulling the bridge forward.

Incredibly, thousands of tonnes of
steel would have been on the move,

creeping out
at up to six inches a minute,

so, literally, the bridge would have
been pushed out over that bank there,

as life went on as normal down below.

And then, every 30 metres or so,

it would meet one of these
sturdy, steel vertical supports.

On top of those pillars
were more bearings,

and once the bridge reached them,

it simply rolled onwards
towards the next set of supports

some 30 metres further on.

Key to every part of this bridge,

from the approach roads
to the high arches, are rivets.

The whole structure relies on
nearly a million of them

to keep it together.

A rivet is no more than
a mushroom-shaped steel peg.

Heated white-hot, it's pushed into
a hole drilled through the steel,

to be joined together.

Then, powerful hammers
form a second head.

As it cools, the rivet pulls
the two parts of the metal together,

forming a bond almost as strong
as a modern weld.

The Tyne Bridge was one of the last
really big engineering projects

to use these things, rivets.

So I've come here to an engineering
works just outside Newcastle,

to find out more about them.

The firm specialises
in restoring old structures

like the Tyne Bridge
and is run by Doug Judd.

So, Doug, any chance you can show me
the whole riveting process?

How they built the Tyne Bridge?
Yes, I can, actually.

How we do it by modern standards.

This is the first process, to heat up
the rivets. To heat the rivets, yeah.

This is what you use here now, and this is
what, sorry? This is an induction heater.

If we press this button here,

it shows you how long it takes
to heat the rivet up.

Wow, we've got smoke coming off
the rivet here within...

a second of pressing the button.

Before they can be hammered in,
the rivets need to be heated up

to an incredible
1,000 degrees Centigrade.

Doug uses a modern induction heater,

but in the 1920s
it was far more basic.

'Cause this must've been
dangerous work, then?

Very dangerous work.

So they wouldn't have used this when
they were building the Tyne Bridge?

No, they would use a grazer.

When it heated up to around
1,000 degrees Cs,

someone would man the fire
and then throw them up where they

would be either caught in a bucket
or caught by hand

and then placed in the steelwork
before being riveted up.

So they chucked these things
at around 1,000 degrees C?

Yeah. Flippin' heck!

So when I'm on that rivet gun,
any tips? Just hold it down?

Just hold it down and gently...
Don't let it kick back too much.

Just hold it down
and sort of go in a circular motion.

Whoa! Look at that.

Right,
you can feel the heat off that.

This is not dissimilar to a kind of
gun they would've used...

Yeah, exactly the same.

Building the Tyne?

Right, let's get that down.
Go for it.

Am I going? Away you go.

OK, here we go.

Is that alright?
Nice work, yeah.

Look at that!

I'm quite proud of that.
That looks great.

Good job. Thanks, Doug.

Yeah, I guess if you're doing that...

I mean, I guess, what, 100 a day?

I would not like to try
putting in 100 a day.

But when they were back building
the bridge, they would've done, what?

They would have done 100 a day
easily, without a doubt.

After my brief apprenticeship
as a riveter,

I cannot help but have
a huge amount of respect

for the men who built this bridge.

Of all the bridges in Britain,
building the Tyne Bridge

must've been one of the toughest
assignments going.

The government clause saying it
had to be built from above,

causing both a design
and structural nightmare.

The men risking their necks,
six days a week, hundreds of feet up,

often in gales and rain
blowing in off the North Sea,

but somehow the Geordies managed it.

And on the 10 October, 1928,

the bridge was officially opened by
King George and his wife, Queen Mary.

It is my earnest hope that this
notable improvement

may help to bring back to your city
the full tide of prosperity

which your courage and patience

and the recent difficulties
so justly deserve.

I have much pleasure in declaring
the Tyne Bridge open

for the use of the public.

But despite the pomp and ceremony
and the years of hard graft,

the multi-million pound gamble
didn't work.

The North East was
still in deep trouble.

By 1931, just a few years
after the bridge was completed,

14 yards on the Tyne had closed,
including the mighty Palmers,

who'd launched over 1,000 ships.

As a means of keeping the men
of Tyneside

employed and off the streets,

building the bridge helped
for a while,

but it didn't bring
the old time back to life.

In fact, you can even see
evidence of its death

inside the bridge tower here.

The towers on either side
of the bridge are normally locked,

but we've been given special access
to show you inside.

Because it's in here
that you can clearly see

why the building of the Tyne Bridge

marked the beginning of the end
of Newcastle's golden age.

Symbol of the North East,

the Tyne Bridge has stood
above the river for almost 90 years.

Built in the depression of the 1920s,

it's role was not just to take
traffic across the busy river below,

but to help boost employment
and keep the engineering skills

of the North East alive,
until its industries boomed again.

Sadly, that never happened,

and the bridge itself
stands testament

to just how much Newcastle
has changed.

These towers were meant to be
vast warehouses

serving industry on the River Tyne,

industry everyone hoped would
boom again like the old days.

I mean, just look at this place,
it's cavernous,

and not at all what you'd expect
from the outside.

The hope was
that once the bridge was built,

the recession would be over
and Tyneside would return to its role

as the great manufacturing hub
of the North East.

These towers would be packed
with five floors of merchandise,

waiting to be transported
around the country.

Lifts were even installed

to carry the goods up and down
from the quayside.

But it was not to be and these
warehouses were never even finished.

It really is quite spooky up here.

The echo of the voice,
the constant rumbling of traffic,

the birds flapping about.

It's such an empty void.

They never even got
to putting the floors in.

And since then,
it's just been gathering dust.

Whoo.

Made it.

And from the top of the towers,

you get a really good idea

of how much the River Tyne
has transformed over the years.

Look at that view.

The Tyne I'm looking at,

the Tyne this bridge has stood over
for almost 90 years,

has completely changed.

When this bridge was first built,

almost every inch of the riverbanks
would have been covered in shipyards.

It's sad.

For over 150 years,

thousands of ships were launched
from the yards

that once stretched over 11 miles
along the River Tyne.

The most famous company, Swan Hunter,
used to provide a job for life.

The huge ships they built once
towering over the city streets.

But in 2006 it was all over.

In April that year, this ship,
the RFA Largs Bay, left the Tyne.

And its builders,
the mighty Swan Hunters,

closed its doors forever.

Both John Ashburner and his father
worked for Swan Hunter

and witnessed the industry's
fatal decline.

30,000 workers, when I was there.
Aye.

I mean, when I first started,
there were 600 apprentices...

Aye, aye.
..taken on each year. Aye.

And that just petered out as the
years went by. Wow, wow, wow.

600. 600 apprentices.

That number, 30,000, to then
suddenly not have employment...

It slowly just dwindled away.

So, how does it make you feel
to look at this site now?

I... I can't really believe it,
it's all gone.

But I knew it would get
less and less,

but there's none at all now,
shipyards on the Tyne.

You'd never think in my lifetime
you wouldn't see a ship being built.

Really, just unimaginable,
when you were there

with the amount of activity
down there.

Job for life, you know.

And how quickly things changed.
Thousands being laid off.

It's sad to see it just sat here
like this now, isn't it?

Tyneside's shipbuilding industry,

which the building of the Tyne Bridge
had desperately tried to protect,

was finally given the death blow

when the last great cranes
at the Swan Hunter yard

were demolished in June, 2010.

But as the industry on the Tyne
declined, nature quickly moved in.

One of the most telling indicators
of the scale of change here

is not the number of empty hardhats
further downstream,

but these little guys here,
kittiwakes.

For me, the fact that this bridge
is now one of the most successful

breeding grounds for kittiwakes
in the country

shows just how much change
this bridge has seen.

The first pair of kittiwakes
nested on the bridge in 1997.

Now, there are over 700.

But the Tyneside they fly over
is far from dead.

Its population is now again
growing fast.

The heavy industries
may have all but disappeared,

but 21st-century high-tech Newcastle
is buzzing with energy and optimism.

Since the Tyne Bridge was built,

another six bridges have spanned the
river to deal with the city's growth.

The last of those built in 2001,
this...

the incredible
Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

Known locally as the Blinking Eye,

this 21st-century bridge is a
celebration of a new, cool Newcastle.

One where the old quaysides
are now packed with hip bars,

restaurants,
and stunning modern architecture.

But at the end of the day,
there will only be one bridge

that truly embodies
this part of the world.

I think the Tyne Bridge means, when
you see it, that you're coming home.

See that bridge, it just...

it just makes you feel that
you're back at home.

And everybody says the same,
we just love it.

Throughout all those changes,

this bridge, the Tyne Bridge,
remains an icon,

a testament to the skill and
determination of the Geordies.

You only have to mention it
to people round here

to see how proud they are.

And in my view,
they've every right to be so.

Captions by Ericsson Access Services
SBS Australia 2017