John Grey

Newcastle is the most populous urban centre on the route of Hadrian’s Wall. The path of the wall runs through the centre of the city close to where Armstrong’s 1876 Swing Bridge now stands. The Swing Bridge also marks the site of Pons Aelius, the original Roman bridge across the river, Aelius being the family name of the Emperor Hadrian. Pons Aelius also refers to the Roman settlement at the river crossing, and to the original Roman fort, the site of which is now occupied by the Norman castle keep which gave Newcastle its name. There are no visible remains of the wall in Central Newcastle, though sections have been discovered and reburied in the course of building and utilities works. No doubt much of the Roman masonry would have been incorporated in the building of the Norman castle. The Cathedral of St Nicholas is also built on the route of the wall.

This etching is of the view from the southern end of the Swing Bridge with the castle and cathedral behind.

I hand printed this work from an etched brass plate. To make the printing plate I first made a line etching by coating a polished brass plate in varnish and then drawing the outlines of the view with a needle, exposing the brass where the needle scrapes through the varnish. Etching for about ten minutes in Ferric Chloride bites these lines into the plate so that, when the plate is inked and polished, ink is trapped in the lines and can be transferred to paper in a press.

The next step was to add the shaded tones to areas of the plate by a process of aquatinting. This involves dusting the plate with finely powdered rosin and then melting this onto the plate. The effect of this is to protect the plate from etching where the particles of rosin are stuck to the plate so that etching only occurs between these, producing a rough texture that traps the ink. After applying the rosin I etched the plate in stages, first using wax to block out the lightest part of the scene, then etching for about a minute, then blocking out the next lightest sections and re-etching for a further minute, and so on, continuing until the darkest sections of the image were etched for about fifteen minutes. I did some of the etching by dipping the plate in a tank of acid, other parts, where I wanted a more subtle range of tones, I etched by painting the acid onto the plate.

Finally after cleaning all the wax and varnish off the plate I printed the image onto paper by inking the whole plate and then polishing the ink off so that it only remains trapped in the areas bitten by the acid. I transferred the image from the plate to damp Somerset Satin paper using a traditional etching press and dried the resulting prints between weighted boards for a few days.