Robert Richardson Dees (1814 - 1908)

Robert Richardson Dees was born in Westgate, Newcastle on 19th September 1814, the eldest child of a family of ten. He trained as a solicitor in London before establishing his own practice at no. 8a Pilgrim Street in Newcastle. He was President of the Law Society (Newcastle), a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society. In December 1856, Richardson Dees moved from St. Mary's Place in Newcastle, to live in Wallsend Hall, having bought the estate the previous year. He was responsible for undertaking alterations to the Hall, and for the laying out of much of the Hall grounds and formal woodland walks. In 1897, he gifted fourteen acres of land (the site of the former Wallsend C Pit) for use as a public park, now known as Richardson Dees Park. After his death on the 30th November, 1908, Wallsend Hall and its grounds were bequeathed to his nephew, the then Mayor of Wallsend, Mr. Robert Irwin Dees.