The North Shields High Street Heritage Action Zone will deliver a four-year programme of physical improvements, community and cultural activities. It is a place-based scheme designed to secure lasting improvements to historic high streets and the communities who use them.
In partnership with the Churches Trust, Historic England and North Tyneside Council Old Low Light Heritage Centre volunteer Mike Coates shares his research into the life and times of abolitionist John Foster Spence (1818-1901). Spence’s extraordinary six decades of unstinting public service to the community of Tynemouth/North Shields earned him the nickname of ‘The Grand Old Man of Shields’.