Manors Car Park
1971
Manors Car Park is an inglorious remnant of the T. Dan Smith era of planning in the city of Newcastle and to this day divides opinion as to its worth. Sandwiched between the East Coast Mainline railway and the inner urban A167(M) motorway, its curved plan hugs the slip road on its convex side. The city here is layered, underground, underpass, surface and high level carriageways and a wonderfully elongated pedestrian bridge from where one can marvel at the malevolent magnificence wrought upon the city in the name of progress. The rigidly ribbed verticals of the car park structure offer rhythmic palpitations when experienced at speed. Its sort of heroic and tragic at the same time. D.T. Bradshaw was the City Engineer charged with its design and it was constructed by Brims & Co. Ltd., a local contractor that remains in business to this day.