Bensham, Gateshead

Cotfield Street

Demolished

Painted 1964; demolished, year not yet confirmed.

The cobbled back lane of Cotfield Street seen from above: yard walls and outhouses, chimney stacks, a telegraph pole, and a poster on the gable end at right. — Back Cotfield Street, Gateshead, 1964

Cotfield Street is where it started. Laid up with a knee injury in 1964, Charlie sat in his Aunt Violet Gwendoline Woodhead's front room at 262 Bensham Road and looked out at the back lane opposite. Over five or six mornings he painted what he saw, in pen and wash. The result was titled "Back Cotfield Street". The street was demolished shortly after.

Forty-two years later he wrote that he owed it all to the anonymous half-back who temporarily crippled him. Cotfield Street is the origin point for a body of work that eventually reached the Royal Academy four times.

The street itself

The book Pursued by Bulldozers shows photographs of the streets Charlie painted alongside the paintings themselves, so the two records can be read together.

A photograph of Cotfield Street — Cotfield Street, Bensham, photographed. Reproduced in the book, p. 31

More of Cotfield Street in the catalogue

Cotfield Street in watercolour: Taits corner shop at left, terraced houses running uphill, a man walking a dog.

Cotfield Street, Bensham, Gateshead-on-Tyne

Undated · Watercolour

Cotfield Street in snow, a corner shop with a green window, a dark house closing the street, smoking chimneys.

Cotfield Street, Bensham

Undated · Oil on board