Nos 1-18 (Link Blocks) With Attached Garden Walls

Nos 1-18 (Link Blocks) with Attached Garden Walls, Newcastle upon Tyne

A perimeter block of 161 flats and maisonettes with two projecting link blocks, built between 1971 and 1974. Designed by Ralph Erskine's Arkitektkontor with Vernon Gracie as site architect and White, Young and Partners as structural engineer. The main contractor was Stanley Miller Ltd.

The structure uses in situ reinforced concrete cross-walls with concrete strip foundations to each cross wall and ground beams supporting external walls. Pre-cast concrete cantilever brackets are cast into the cross walls. The roadside wall (predominantly on the north) is clad in brown, orange and red metric modular brick facing the road, with pale brick on the inner face. The roofs are prominent blue metal, supported on plywood box beam purlins and rising to peaks over lift towers.

The link blocks (Kendal House and Brinkburn Court) have concrete blockwork cross-walls with pre-cast concrete cantilevers for balconies and access decks built into them. They are clad in pale brick with blue metal roofs on plywood box beam purlins. The scheme rises between three and eight storeys.

Two-storey family maisonettes occupy the ground floor level, positioned within walled gardens on the inner face, with smaller maisonettes above accessed from balconies on every third level. These balconies are semi-independent structures designed to reduce noise, with a seat or planting box covering the gap between the balcony and building. Living rooms and bedrooms are arranged above or below the entrance level, which features kitchen-diners with paired entrance doors. Bedrooms have balconies that double as fire escape routes.

The outer elevations have tiny windows to the north and west sides facing the main road and metro, all double-glazed and lighting only kitchens, bathrooms and landings. Prominent, brightly coloured ventilator boxes punctuate this elevation, along with a prominent boiler flue at the end of the main range.

Shipley Walk features decorative square patterning to the carriageway and decorative stone detailing to the inner face taken from a 19th-century building. The inner face has timber windows with aluminium opening lights, and timber doors with glazed panels, many renewed in hardwood, with built-in seats to the side.

The end carriageway opening on to Gordon Road contains Gordon House, three to four storeys, with brown timber balconies with doors leading on to them. The end wall displays a winged figure, possibly of Mercury and said to be from Newcastle's Old Town Hall. Long red-brown balconies face the external elevation. Ground-floor gardens are sheltered by brick walls and timber fences on brick plinths.

Dalton Crescent rises in steps to eight storeys with blue balconies to the inner face and individual red and blue balconies to the external face. Shipley Walk begins with a carriageway opening to Kendal Street, rising from five to eight storeys, with blue balconies and enclosed red-brown end balconies by lifts and stairs. Kendal House is three to five storeys, linked to the perimeter block at second-floor level with a second-floor walkway, featuring blue balconies and a blue and brown linking balcony walkway. Brinkburn Court is a similar three to five storey link block with a shop at no. 8 in the end, blue balconies on concrete cantilevers and red service gates.

Interiors of the maisonettes are simple, with stairs leading up from the kitchen-diner, which in some flats is still divided by the original counter.

Dalton Crescent and Shipley Walk form the first part of the perimeter block to be built and constitute one of the most distinctive parts of the Byker complex. In March 1967 the Housing Architect's Department proposed building a barrier block to shelter the area from a proposed inner motorway planned along the line of the present relief road and the metro. This proposal was revised in May 1968 after a Conservative majority came to power. In 1969 Ralph Erskine was recommended to undertake the Byker Redevelopment, initially to reappraise the Housing Architect's Department proposals. He endorsed the barrier block concept, basing his design on his uncompleted mining town of Svappavaara in Sweden (1963), where a barrier block was conceived as a way of creating a microclimate in its south-facing lee. Similar effects are achieved here, with the south-facing balconies and flats making the most of remarkable views.

The modular metric brick measures 290mm by 90mm by 65mm and was developed by Crossley and Sons in County Durham in collaboration with the City of Newcastle. When mortared, it achieves a module of 12 inches by 4 inches by 3 inches. The wall design reflected Newcastle's late-1960s policy of not placing family units above the ground floor, while the small upper maisonettes reflected the large need for one-bedroom accommodation to serve the high proportion of elderly people forming the Byker community at that time.