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The last of the great staiths which despatched millions of tons of coal from the Tyne provided a perfect platform for an artist’s latest creation.

Now a new book on Newcastle University Professor of Contemporary Sculpture Wolfgang Weileder’s project has placed Dunston Staiths in Gateshead centre stage in a national heritage debate.

This includes what constitutes heritage, how sustainable it is, what should be saved and how and if art can play a part in the process.

Wolfgang’s Jetty project, which focused last year on the staiths, was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

He designed a cone that was built on the staiths, which is a scheduled monument.

Experts from across the UK have weighed in with their take on the Jetty project in the book, titled Catalyst: Art, Sustainability and Place in the Work of Wolfgang Weileder.

One of the aims of the project was to raise the profile of the listed Dunston Staiths, the last survivor of its type on the Tyne, which had suffered deterioration and damage from two fires.

The 526 metre long structure includes 98 cross-braced wooden frames.

One of the book’s contributors, Prof Malcolm Miles from Plymouth University’s School of Architecture, Design and Environment, said: “It remains one of the largest timber structures in the world.

“By the end of the 1890s, a million tons of coal a year was carried from Dunston by more than a thousand ships, rising to four million tons in the 1930s.”

By 1980 the staiths had closed, although 10 years later the structure served as a promenade and artwork site for the Gateshead National Garden Festival.

Wolfgang says: “ I wanted to provide a platform for a debate. What do we do with the staiths, and can art be part of the solution?

“Dunston Staiths is now a case study which applies to all heritage, and particularly industrial heritage.

“Architecturally it is an amazing structure, although the people who worked there probably found it a not a very nice place to work and may have thought differently.”

As well as installing the cone artwork, Wolfgang also assembled at the Great North Museum in Newcastle a one to four scale replica of the section of the staiths which was lost in the fire of 2003.

“Now the idea is to find a place to exhibit the missing section and it is important that it is shown outside the North East,” he said.

The hope is that increasing awareness of the architectural, social and historic importance of the staiths will help guarantee its future survival.

“The hope is that it will instigate something,” says Wolfgang.

The nine metre-high cone, which echoed the Lemington glassworks structures on the opposite riverbank, was built with 11 tonnes of black slabs of Aquadyne, which is made from plastic waste and is used mainly by the building industry.

It was constructed by Mears Group Ltd apprentices from Gateshead College.

Professor Tim Ingold, who holds the chair of Social Anthropology at Aberdeen University, draws a parallel between the coal of the staiths and the plastic of the cone.

“Coal is our geological past, formed from ancient forests. Aquadyne is made from the kind of plastic waste which is currently choking our seas and filling our land.

“What would a geologist of the distant future make of the deposits of plastic? Will they be seen as reserves of raw material for the manufacture of Aquadyne which by then could be as ubiquitous as concrete is to us now?”

Prof Simon Guy, formerly of Newcastle University and now Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University, and research associate Angela Connelly, consider the conflicting ways in which the staiths can be viewed.

“A powerful reminder of economic decline, the staiths’ forlorn condition may not connect well with ideas about positive urban futures,” they say.

“Questions are raised about the structure’s viability. Should its decline be managed gracefully or should it be saved as a reminder of the River Tyne’s industrial history?”