Killingworth, formerly Killingworth Township, is a town north of Newcastle Upon Tyne, in North Tyneside, United Kingdom.

Built as a planned town in the 1960s, most of Killingworth's residents commute to Newcastle, or the city's surrounding area. However, Killingworth itself has a sizeable commercial centre, strong bus links to the rest of Tyne and Wear, several schools, a medical centre and library, which provide for the town's community. A new leisure centre which contains a 25 m swimming pool and gym opened in May 2007. Killingworth is not on the Tyne and Wear Metro network but the nearest metro station is Palmersville.

Nearby towns/villages include Killingworth Village (which existed for centuries before the Township was built), Forest Hall, West Moor and Backworth.

• Killingworth was used in the filming of the sitcom Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? in 1973/1974. The Highfields estate, built in the early 1970s and containing some of Killingworth's first privately-owned houses, was seen as a suitable location for the new home (on Agincourt) of the young couple Thelma and Bob, while Terry Collier works at a factory (filmed at the Killingworth industrial estate). Although Killingworth is not mentioned in the series, its presence can be seen as reflective of the times.
• In an episode of the architecture series Grundy's Wonders on Tyne Tees, John Grundy deemed Killingworth's former British Gas Research Centre Image:British Gas.jpg the best industrial building in the North East.
• Being at the edge of the original Town Moor, Killingworth has a lot of recreational land, such as the playing fields used by local schools and the Killingworth Arms Football Club. In 1996, several Newcastle United players, and the then-manager Kevin Keegan, opened a tarmacced football area in the west of Killingworth.
• The Doctor Who episode titled "Mark of the Rani" depicted a 19th century Killingworth in its episode, with the 6th Doctor in search of George Stephenson after the villager goes mad.

Construction of Killingworth, a new town, began in 1963. Intended for 20,000 people, it was a former mining community, and was formed on 760 acres (3.1 km²) of derelict colliery land near Killingworth Village, which had existed since the 18th century and earlier. The building of Killingworth Township was undertaken by Northumberland County Council, and was not sponsored by the Government. It was assigned "New Town" status in the 1960s in a similar fashion to the nearby town of Cramlington.

Unlike that town, Killingworth's planners adopted a radical approach to town centre design, resulting in a development of relatively high-rise buildings in an avant-garde and brutalist style, and won awards for architecture, dynamic industry and attractive environment.

This new town centre consisted of pre-cast concrete houses, with millions of small shells unusually embedded into their external walls, 5 to 10 storey flats, offices, industrial units and service buildings, which often consisted of artistic non functional characteristics, shops and residential multi storey car parks, interconnected by ramps and walkways. These made up a deck system of access to shopping and other facilities, constructed on the Swedish Skarne method of construction [1].

Originally named Killingworth Township, the latter part of the name was quickly dropped through lack of colloquial use. Killingworth is often referred to as 'Killy' by a large portion of residents of the town and residents of the surrounding areas.

Around 1964, during the reclamation of the derelict pit sites, a 15-acre (61,000 m²) lake south of the town centre was created; spoil heaps were levelled, seeded and planted with semi-mature trees. Today, swans, ducks and local wildlife live around the two lakes which span the main road into Killingworth. The lake is kept well stocked with fish and an angling club and model boating club use the lakes regularly.

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  Building in the western industrial estate, previously British Gas, now North Tyneside Council, 2 May 2006
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  Killingworth boating lake, 2 May 2006
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  Carriage formerly used to carry coal south of Killingworth.

Killingworth was home to a number of pits including the world-famous Killingworth Colliery. It was here in 1814 that George Stevenson, enginewright at the colliery, built his first locomotive Blücher in the workshop behind his house "Dial Cottage" on Lime Road. This locomotive could haul 30 tons of coal up a hill at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive; its traction depended only on the contact between its flanged wheels and the rail. It was used to tow wagons of coal along the wagonway from Killingworth to the Wallsend staithes. Although Blücher did not survive long it provided Stephenson with the knowledge and experience to build better locomotives at Killingworth but later, including the famous Rocket, in his locomotive works in Newcastle.^[2].

At around the same time Stephenson was also developing his own version of the miner's safety lamp with the help and encouragement of his manager at Killingworth, Nicholas Wood. He demonstrated the lamp underground in Killingworth pit a month before Sir Humphry Davy presented his design to the Royal Society in London in 1815. Known as the "Geordie lamp" it was to be widely used in the North-east in place of the Davy lamp.^[3]

Killingworth originally consisted of local authority houses. The first houses at Angus Close, owned by the local authority, were built to house key workers for the British Gas Research Center. The rest of Killingworth's estates were cul-de-sacs named "Garths" - all numbered, although Garths 1-3 never existed. The actual numbering of the Garths was;4,6,7,9,11,12,13,etc. In the 1990s the Garths located in West Bailey changed their names to street names with estates taking certain trends such as garth 11 is named after trees, laburnum court, willow gardens etc and garth 12 after birds e.g. dove close, chaffinch way

The houses in most of the Garths were built of concrete and had flat roofs, but around 1995 the Local Housing Association modernised the Garths in West Bailey (the west of Killingworth): they added pitched roofs to the flat-roofed homes, renewed fencing, built new brick sheds, and relocated roads and pathways. The housing estate formally know as garth 21 was never built as Local Housing but as a private estate, the houses are detached and semi detached 3 and 4 bed room. The street names are Crumstone Court, Longstone, Megstone ect. Along with this they changed several Garths' names and replaced them with names of lakes, birds and trees. The lowest remaining numbered Garth is Garth Four (the highest is Garth Thirty-Two in East Bailey aka The Paddock).
Many of the Local Authority Homes have been purchased by the tenants, some of whom still reside in the houses that were built new in the 1960s.

Killingworth has grown since the early 1960s, with the addition of new privately-owned homes, Highfields Estate was built in the 1970s and was named after battles e.g. Flodden, Agincourt, Stamford, Culloden, Sedgemoor, etc.

The most eye catching and radical aspect of the township was the 3 tier housing estate called the Killingworth Towers - these were high rise apartment blocks built in the early 1970s by ^{[citation required]}. Tenanted by the local authority, they were made of dark grey concrete blocks, and were named Bamburgh, Kielder and Ford Tower etc, after castles. They consisted of a combination of 1, 2 and 3 storey homes built on top of each other rising to 10 storey’s high in some towers with tremendious views. The estate was originally designed to mimic a medieval castle ^{[citation required]} with an outer wall and inner keep all interconnected to elevators and garbage shoots by ramps and a 2 tier walkway (see photos). This design could be realized on maps of the Towers which existed on the cast iron drain covers within the estate. The walkways all led to a ¼ mile long elevated walkway leading straight through the mostly covered Killingworth Citadel Shopping Centre. This communal configuration was experimental and somewhat typical of the time. The idea was to create community interaction, with large parks in the grasslands around the towers and social clubs for the adults. However, despite this vision of an integrated society, the design did not live up to expectations. The estate started to look, and feel, like a prison rather than a castle with the introduction of measures to stop anti-social behavior from youths (would be ASBOs) congregating within the high rise instead of in the parks. Grating was retrofitted to prevent risk takers sliding down the 100ft high girders holding up the walkways, and cast iron grills were erected to stop thoroughfare by over exuberant youths racing their bikes and skateboards along the perfectly smooth walkway racetrack. Dogs fouling the limited ecosystem walkways, blocked garbage shoots, vandalism and fires set in the communal bins, stairwells, lifts and multi storey residential car parks also added to the ever growing list of problems. The residents fight to have pride in their homes was never easy due to their design. The Towers were not widely popular and were consequently demolished in 1987. The last remaining eyesore, the walkway to the shops, was eventually demolished as it served no further practical interconnecting or visually pleasing purpose after the Towers and the shopping centres demise. Both it and the derelict shopping centre stood alone for 10 years until funds were found to bring them down.

Although happy to see the end of them, some local people still look upon the Towers with the nostalgia of a failed new age of architecture with lessons learned.

Andrew Soppitt shops at Morrisons here. You may have heard of him as the local fella with a big heart and a soft spot for chocolate. Only christian in the village. Fwriend.

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  The Towers in the 1970's
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  The Towers just prior to demoilition in 1987
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  The Towers again just prior to demolition in 1987

The land is now occupied by two new estates of privately-owned homes which were built by Cussins Homes and Barratt Homes.

The first two shops built in Killingworth in the 1960s were Moore's and a small confectionery shop, situated between Garth Six and Angus Close and next door to the West House pub, but these shops were demolished in the 1970s.

The original town centre was built in the 1960s. The boxer Henry Cooper declared the shopping centre open while standing on the steps of the Puffing Billy pub. The centre included a large department store, Woolco, which sold groceries, car parts, and even incorporated a tyre service bay. The shopping centre also included Dewhurst butchers, Greggs bakery, and newsagents, but it was demolished in the 1980s.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Morrisons shopping complex (containing the Morrisons supermarket) was the commercial centre of Killingworth, while the former Woolco site stood as wasteland for more than a decade. Then, in the early 2000s, the Killingworth Centre, a modern shopping mall, was built on the former Woolco site. It contains Morrisons (which relocated - its former building is now the Matalan clothing store), the Card Factory, Centre News newsagent, Trims For Him barber, Supercuts hairdresser, Thorntons chocolate shop, a chemist, Peacocks clothing store, Jobcentre Plus, Bowes Mitchell Estate Agents, Travel Agents, Wilkinsons, Deichmann shoe shop, Catalogue Bargain Shop, Peter's Bakery, an optician, Kodak photographic shop, bookmaker, DVD Hire/Sales, video games sales and McDonalds.

The Killingworth Centre also incorporates a covered bus station which is served by Stagecoach, Arriva, Go-North East, Northumbria Coaches and Classic Buses. lack of metros

Raised above the car park is the Killingworth Health Centre which has a doctors' and dentists' surgery.

In December 2007 a planning application was submitted for a new KFC restaurant and a public house on the waste ground adjacent to the car park with work starting in the summer of 2009.

The Hello Eco Living website designed by Killingworth based 21 Inspired ^[4] was chosen as a showcase site for the 1.2 release of the BuddyPress social network.

This is a large white building in the town centre.
Originally, a building owned by Merz & McLellan, built in the 1960s, stood here. This office block contained 100,000 square feet (10,000 m²) of office space and employed 600 professional and clerical people. Constructed by Northumberland County Council, the building towered over Killingworth and could be seen for miles around.
Over the years, the office space became vacant and, like the former Woolco site, it was disused through the 1990s. Then the building was reduced in height, remodernised, reopened and renamed the White Swan Centre. It incorporates the Killingworth Library, North Tyneside Council Rent and Rates Office, Education Centre, Coffee Shop,and Conference Rooms.

Killingworth is also home to four primary schools (Westmoor, Bailey Green, Moor Edge and Amberley) and a high school, George Stephenson High School. In recent years Killingworth moved from a three tier education system consiting of, First, Middle and High schools, to the current two tier system. There is a new kids series being filmed in killingworth high school for the bbc called kids life , re: life in a north east school a bit like Grange Hill , with faces from the past and present of newcastle local life including Robson green and Jimmy Nail.

Killingworth has three public houses (and there are two more in Killingworth Village).

• The West House, originally called the West House Inn, is in West Bailey. It was built from a derelict farmhouse and barn, in the style of an old Northumberland inn.
• The Station public house is on the industrial estate to the west of the town. It was originally next to the Killingworth railway station, which was demolished some years ago. The railway still runs by the Station pub, with a level crossing within 50 m of the pub.
• Killingworth Working Men's Social Club (in East Bailey) was built in the 1970s and located next to the Town Centre.

The two public houses in Killingworth Village are:

• The Killingworth Arms (originally a hotel) is located at the top of Killingworth Bank
• The Plough Inn, situated in the centre of Killingworth Village opposite the entrance to the park

There is currently a forth public house under construction on the same site as a new fast food outlet, KFC, adjacent to the White Swan Centre. The public house will be named 'The Shire Horse' and will open 10 May 2010.

1. Killingworth Photos and Videos group on Facebook contains over 350 old and new local photos, school photos, 11 videos and discussion all on Killingworth
2. Killingworth lake

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Killingworth.

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