Durham House (Tall black Washington building)

I worked on the top floor during COVID 2020-21 didn’t see any spies. It’s more suited for a bus spotter as had a great view of Washington bus station.
 


Chesterladmackem said:
When were you there?
I worked for ITSA on mainframes,output and giro printing from 87 to 96.
Jumped ship back into normal civil service when EDS got its paws on the contract.
Worked on Kern, Ciba machines on shift work.
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Chesterladmackem said:
When were you there?
I worked for ITSA on mainframes,output and giro printing from 87 to 96.
Jumped ship back into normal civil service when EDS got its paws on the contract.
Worked on Kern, Ciba machines on shift work.
Click to expand...
Was probably covering the site from 2006 to 2012 so after your time, EDS brought us in to take over all the IBM equipment and kicked the IBM guys out (guess we were cheaper). We had done a similar thing at BT,s print Center on the Team Valley. Being In Durham house was great though, had friends who worked in Child Benefit in the tower and the socialising was good.
 
Zimba said:
Nightmare isn't it? I seen they're now planning to stop you from getting out of Tesco towards the Tyne Bridge aswell so the only way you can go is out via Askew Road, so an even bigger detour if heading in from North of the river.

It's like they want to kill the place completely.
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I don't usually go over the Tyne Bridge but that is bonkers as well!

I know they've got the "clean air corridor" now along by the river but Gateshead is probably a lot worse now with all the traffic sitting on the road around the town centre.
 
Mackem00 said:
Washington is weird. The way it's designed and the people who inhabit it make no sense. Just an area of nothingness in no mans' land.

Washington village is canny mind which seems to have been randomly dropped in the middle of the nothingness around it.
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True back in the day the signs were District 1 to 15 or something like that. Drivers from outside didn't have a clue where they were going.

Lived near Washington in Birtley for years and only ever knew The Cherry Tree and Morgan's Ayton, The Silver Dollar in The Galleries for buying weed and The Galleries itself

Oh and Dickens home improvement hypermarket..

Fuck knows where Columbia or Donwell were
 
Gasteiz said:
True back in the day the signs were District 1 to 15 or something like that. Drivers from outside didn't have a clue where they were going.

Lived near Washington in Birtley for years and only ever knew The Cherry Tree and Morgan's Ayton, The Silver Dollar in The Galleries for buying weed and The Galleries itself

Oh and Dickens home improvement hypermarket..

Fuck knows where Columbia or Donwell were
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Washington for me was always Makro and not Makro
 
ShoutyBearHead said:
I worked there from 93 to 97 - they can nuke it from orbit as far as I’m concerned
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Pretty much same timeframe worked there - downstairs in ITSA though.
Chesterladmackem said:
When were you there?
I worked for ITSA on mainframes,output and giro printing from 87 to 96.
Jumped ship back into normal civil service when EDS got its paws on the contract.
Worked on Kern, Ciba machines on shift work.
Click to expand...
Replied to another thread. I started there in 93 working in the mail room. Then moved into quality control and then on to those machines. Left in 97 - those shifts were a killer, although Fridays evening extended 'lunch' was good when the lads went down the Village necking as many pints as possible before returning to run heavy machines! :) I started on contract before getting a permanent position but was never considered such - always a woodentop! Twats! :)
 
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DaveH said:
I know what you mean, I think particularly late evening. During the day it was ok but rougher at night. In my teens if I was walking up from the Galleries, I'd come to that bridge, then being on alert until I crossed the road to the top end of Backfell, and then I'd relax again. Nothing ever really happened.

I think a lot of it depended on the years you were at school. I was Oxclose 88-93 and there was nobody really bad on our year. But the ones most likely to get in a fight were from Lambton. But there were a few kids in the years above you would not want to bump into after school. If you were a couple of years older then I can understand your view.

A friend lived in Striding Edge, down the bottom end. That was council housing and at first that was great for them. All young families, all mixing with each other, and like the posters promised. Then policy rounded up the problem families from the wider area and moved a lot in at the same time. That dragged the whole area down.
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Yep, from 12+ I lived in Lambton and got surrounded by a bunch down the village centre, and got a punch to the head before running home.
 
Shack said:
Pretty much same timeframe worked there - downstairs in ITSA though.

Replied to another thread. I started there in 93 working in the mail room. Then moved into quality control and then on to those machines. Left in 97 - those shifts were a killer, although Fridays evening extended 'lunch' was good when the lads went down the Village necking as many pints as possible before returning to run heavy machines! :) I started on contract before getting a permanent position but was never considered such - always a woodentop! Twats! :)
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what shift were you on?
 
Obvious Mag said:
Amazed they haven’t planned to knock it down and expand the leisure stuff around the galleries.

Galleries seems to be one of the few shopping centres doing ok, the retail park is great and from food shopping pov, Very few places you’ll get Asda, Sainsbury’s, Aldi and M&S so close together
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Would be an ideal place for a cinema and couple of restaurants
 
High Entropy said:
Those that know, know ;)

SMB give Washy a lot of stick but it was a great place to grow up for all the reasons you mention. I used to walk to primary school on my own from a young age and only cross one road that had a crossing in it. It was well designed other than those stupid districts, the amount of times lost drivers would ask us, where is District 7 and I wouldn't have a clue (still don't) but mention the village and it was easy, Washington highway, turn off at ...

I think the green spaces you mention were an important part, always playing footy, mass games of rounders with the entire village it seemed like, no main roads other than the ones that went to every village centre, which I also think was a great design idea, every village had it's own shop, pub, school, a utopia as a child, unless you lived in Blackfell where all the Sunderland/Gateshead wronguns got dumped !

Being 50/50 mags and mackems meant you had hellish banter and even some battles when the banter spilled over, these sunderlnad townies know nothing of that, surrounded safely within an echo chamber, not in the vanguard like we were, my best mate is a mag, a constant see-saw of back and forth banter.

Long live the defenders of Hwæsa clan :lol:

Hwæsingatūn. It is essentially composed of three main (albeit grammatically altered) elements:
  • "Hwæsa" – most likely the name of a local Anglo-Saxon chieftain or farmer.
  • "ing" – a Germanic component that has lost its original context in English: ing means roughly "[derived] of/from". In the name Hwæsingatūn, "ing" is conjugated to "inga" in accordance with the genitive plural declension of OE.
  • "tūn" – root of the modern English "town", and is a cognate of German Zaun (fence), Dutch tuin (garden) and Icelandic tún (paddock). The word means "fenced off estate" or more accurately "estate with defined boundaries".

The combined elements (with all correct conjugations in place) therefore create the name Hwæsingatūn with a full and technical meaning of "the estate of the descendants of Hwæsa".
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This. I grew up in Washington. Blackwell (top end) till I was 12 then Oxlose until I was in my 20s with a few years away for uni. Was class.
gatopreto said:
The town would be complete with a cinema
Washington - The centre of the county.
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We had one, but it was shit 😀 Think it was knocked down and the co op built a funeral home on the site. It was in Concord.
 
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