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James Calvert Spence College
James Calvert Spence College is a coeducational community school and sixth form located in Amble in the English county of Northumberland. The school is named after Sir James Calvert Spence, a decorated war hero and paediatrician. The school was formed in 2011 from the merger of Amble Middle School, Druridge Bay Community Middle School and Coquet High School, originally serving 2 sites: South Avenue and Acklington Road, where South Avenue served as a middle school and Acklington Road a secondary school. The school is administered by Northumberland County Council and has an intake of pupils from Acklington, Amble, Broomhill, Hadston, Red Row, Warkworth and Widdrington. The South Avenue site is no longer controlled by James Calvert Spence College, now split between Barndale-by-the-Sea (owned by Barndale House School in Alnwick) and King Edwin Primary School (formerly Amble First School at a different site).
James Calvert Spence College offers GCSEs and BTECs as programmes of study for pupils, while students in the sixth form have the option to study from a range of A-levels, further BTECs and T-Levels..
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659 m
Amble railway station
Amble railway station served the town of Amble, in Northumberland, England. It was the terminus of the 5.75 miles (9.25 km) Amble branch line, which diverged from the East Coast Main Line at Chevington.
906 m
Amble Lifeboat Station
Amble Lifeboat Station is located at Radcliffe Quay, Warkworth Harbour, in the town of Amble, at the mouth of the River Coquet, in the county of Northumberland.
A lifeboat was first stationed at Amble in 1843, by the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (RNIPLS). The Amble station was deemed to have closed in 1852, when a lifeboat was placed at Hauxley in 1852, considered a more suitable location for the "Warkworth Harbour lifeboat".
The station at Amble was re-established by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in 1939, following the deployment of a new motor-powered lifeboat, unsuitable for the Hauxley station, which was closed.
The station currently operates a Shannon-class All-weather lifeboat, 13-16 Elizabeth and Leonard (ON 1323), on station since 2016, and a D-class (IB1) Inshore lifeboat Alf and Dora Whiting (D-867), on station since 2022.
1.5 km
Radcliffe, Northumberland
Radcliffe is a settlement in the county of Northumberland, England. It is located 1 km south of the town of Amble. The population is approximately 15 people
Radcliffe was a mining community, once home to over 700 people. A colliery was worked here until 1892, when a fault in the seam, then fire and flooding, made coal extraction uneconomical. New pit shafts were sunk nearby at Newburgh and later at Hauxley, but flooding remained a problem with the pits in this area.
Through much of the 19th and early to mid-20th century, the name of the settlement included the word Terrace - "Radcliffe Terrace, Hauxley" giving the erroneous impression that it was part of Hauxley (or another local town); despite this, it was an independent (and somewhat isolated) settlement. The first word can be found spelled with many variations, even relatively recently: Ratliff, Radcliffe, Ratcliffe, Ratcliff, and Radcliff (and possibly others).
By the mid-twentieth century, the surviving pits in this area of Northumberland were also becoming uneconomical to run, especially when compared to extraction using opencast mining techniques. The last shift worked underground at Radcliffe was on 2 February 1962. In 1965 plans were drawn up to opencast mine the coal seam beneath Radcliffe and Newbrough.
The aging, and somewhat run-down, colliery-owned housing stock of the village was demolished in 1971 to allow for opencast operations. The inhabitants that had not already moved voluntarily to take advantage of better housing, were relocated to Amble, onto an estate named the Radcliffe estate. Various streets in this town, such as Dandsfield Square, an award-winning project when first built , are named after the demolished streets of Radcliffe.
As of 2009, opencast mining continues in the area, but the mining operations at Radcliffe have ceased, and the land returned to agriculture, and turned over to a nature reserve at Hauxley. Little is now visible at the site of the village - a farm, a few private houses, a mechanic's workshop, and the old sports pavilion survived the demolition. The workshop was the site of Craiggs' Bus Garage, and has re-opened as a repair workshop specialising in agricultural machinery. The house opposite was the home of Charlie Nyberg, who ran a newsagency and barbershop from there. This house, built circa 1960, replaced the previous house and Post Office, demolished for road widening. At the nature reserve, the footings of some features (paths, picnic area, etc.) are partially made with bricks, some of which show the imprint of Radcliff (many collieries included a brickworks). Some newer homes have also been built along the A1068 Amble to Ashington road.
On Sunday, 15 February 1942, at 8:22 pm, a landmine was dropped on Radcliffe by a German aeroplane being chased by an RAF fighter plane. Three houses, a school, and a church were demolished. Three members of the Craiggs' extended family were killed, and several others injured. Casualties would have been much higher if the service in the church had not finished shortly before, and the congregation dispersed.
The Radcliffe War Memorial, erected in 1928 for the First World War, and with an additional roll of honour added for the fallen of the Second World War, was removed from Radcliffe and relocated to Amble, opposite the Amble Clock Tower Memorial in the Town Square. The original location can still be seen at the west side of the A1068 to the south of the village, where the surrounding wrought iron railings remain.