Well, well, well, look at this!
WATER VIEW...James Cleets sketch of the old Roman well below the Lawe. (Photo: Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums).
IT was probably the original source of water for the Roman fort in Shields and was still capable of giving up a clear, pure supply more than 1,500 years later.
It’s gone now, destroyed in the levelling of the ballast hills for the extension of the North Marine Park in the late 19th century.
This is the only known illustration of the old Roman well which stood at the foot of the Lawe.
This sketch is by the artist James Cleet, an exhibition of whose enchanting watercolours opened this week at South Shields Museum.
James Cleet – not to be confused with his son, Jimmy, the photographer who took those compelling pictures of Shields in the 1930s – was born in 1840 into a well-to-do ship-owning family in the town.
He himself became a shipwright. Art was only a hobby but a finely-honed one: The noted local marine and landscape artist John Scott was his tutor, and Cleet’s work was exhibited both at South Shields Art Club and at the Bewick Club in Newcastle. He died in 1913.
The paintings on display in Son of the Sea represent a fascinating journey back into the Shields of the 19th century. Subjects include the old Field House Farm on the Lawe, Frenchman’s Bay, and Mile End Road as it was between 1850 and 1870, when there were still farm cottages on either side.
The paintings, chosen and researched by South Shields Local History Group, also reflect Cleet’s interest in maritime subjects.
In one, a brig is aground at Marsden; in another, a ship is high and dry on the Herd Sands, possibly the steamer Huntsman which got into difficulties on the south side of the pier in 1892.
Another vessel, the Jane, was owned and skippered by a Capt James Cleet, thought to be the artist’s father.
* Son of the Sea can be seen at the museum in Ocean Road until March 24.
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Thursday 17 May 2012
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