In 1068 William the Conqueror defeated Malcolm III of Scotland and his allies on Gateshead Fell.
In 1553, in the reign of Edward VI Newcastle briefly annexed Gateshead, and made another attempt in 1574.
Ambrose Crowley a Quaker nail-manufacturer moved in 1691 to Winlaton, where he set up furnaces and forges on the River Derwent. The river was ideally suitable for tempering steel as the sword-makers of Shotley Bridge also found. Crowley not only produced high-quality nails, but also iron goods such as pots, hinges, wheel-hubs, hatchets and edged tools. He could also make heavy forgings like chains, pumps, cannon carriages and anchors up to four tons in weight. The Crowley works were a tourist attraction and regarded as the largest manufactory of the kind in Europe.
Crowley founded two model settlements near his works, where his employees and their families lived in socialist fashion, with welfare services provided - a forerunner of Robert Owen’s better-known community at New Lanark in Scotland a century later. There were arbitration courts, sickness insurance, and a resident clergyman, teacher and doctor were employed. North of the bridge at Swalwell are fragments of the Crowley works.
William Hawks, originally a blacksmith, started business in Gateshead in 1747, working with the iron brought to the Tyne as ballast by the Tyne colliers. Hawks and Co. eventually became one of the biggest iron businesses in the North, producing anchors, chains and so on to meet a growing demand. There was keen contemporary rivalry between ‘Hawks’ Blacks’ and ‘Crowley’s Crew’. The famous ‘Hawk’s men’ including Ned White, went on to be celebrated in Geordie song and story.
In 1854, a catastrophic explosion on the quayside destroyed most of Gateshead’s mediaeval heritage, and caused widespread damage on the Newcastle side of the river.
Robert Stirling Newall took out a patent on the manufacture of wire ropes in 1840 and in partnership with Messrs. Liddell and Gordon, set up his headquarters at Gateshead. A world-wide industry of wire-drawing resulted. The submarine telegraph cable received its definitive form through Newall’s initiative, involving the use of gutta percha surrounded by strong wires. The first successful Dover-Calais cable on 25 September 1851, was made in Newall’s works. In 1853, he invented the brake-drum and cone for laying cable in deep seas. Half of the first Atlantic cable was manufactured in Gateshead. Newall was interested in astronomy, and his giant 25 inch telescope was set up in the garden at Ferndene, his Gateshead residence in 1871.
In 1831 a locomotive works was built by the Newcastle and Darlington railway, later part of the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway. In 1854 the works moved to a new site and became the manufacturing headquarters of North Eastern Railway. In 1910, locomotive construction was moved to Darlington.