THE WAY WE WERE
We’re crossing the Wear from Sunderland. The bridge remains the same today but the traffic has changed…
However much of a classic car and bus enthusiast you might be there’s a more impressive and long-lived piece of mechanical engineering than even a Bedford HA van dominating this scene. We’re at the point where the River Wear spills out into the North Sea, between Sunderland and Monkwearmouth, looking across the water towards the latter. The very solid-looking Wearmouth Bridge looming majestically over everything is the final crossing of the 60-mile long river.
There’s been a permanent structure here since 1796 but this present iron one dates from 1927 and was built by the famous company of Sir William Arrol and Co., the same firm responsible for the Tower and Forth Rail Bridges. The Wearmouth structure is somewhat less famous and less aesthetically admired than those two landmarks, though. So, perhaps having realised that their way across the Wear is somewhat overshadowed by its more illustrious counterparts the good burghers of Sunderland have put some effort into making their bridge stand out with a variety of different colour schemes over the years. It was originally green, then white by the Sixties (as here), given red highlights in the 1980s and has now gone green again for the 21st century.
Back in 1969 it was the traffic passing underneath its girders that was predominantly green. The two buses emerging from beneath the archway are in the two-tone livery of Sunderland Corporation Transport with a Leyland Panther sporting a rare Strachan body leading. The G-registration means that it’s practically brand new here and perhaps on driver familiarisation duties with its ‘Reserved’ destination blind. Trailing it on a regular service to Grangetown is an AEC Reliance with Willowbrook coachwork, dating from the early 1960s. Note the distinctive sloping driver’s window – the one on the other side was at a conventional vertical angle. Creeping up on the Sunderland Corporation vehicles in the far distance is local competition in the form of a Northern General Marshall-bodied Leyland Leopard in the operator’s distinctive maroon and cream livery.
The outside lane is occupied by a black Morris Minor 1000 saloon indicating to turn right into Matlock Street; something that is no longer possible today because the top of the road has been pedestrianised. There’s a Hillman Imp just beyond it.
Across the other side of the road is a 1965 Bedford HA van being shadowed, appropriately enough, by the Viva HB model that superseded the Vauxhall upon which the Bedford was based. While HA saloons were only built from 1963 to 1966 the commercial variant continued until 1983. Does anyone else remember the days when they used to be everywhere, used by companies such as the Post Office, British Telecom, British Gas and British Rail?
