Part of the Shell Guide series under the general editorship of John Betjeman. (In Chronicles of Failure Sharp says of Betjeman that he 'displayed, as I thought in my staid northern mind, deliberate eccentricity and affectation in dealing with various matters' and 'introduced whimsicalities of his own, without informing me, and omitted important acknowledgements which landed me [and himself later] into difficulties and apologies'. [p.192])
This was an unusual guidebook given Sharp's determination to portray the area fully, for good or ill, including his well recorded feelings about the horrors produced by industrialism. It is worth quoting his introduction at length:
How fully to describe the industrial parts was the chief problem to be resolved at the very outset. There was never any intention of attempting to avoid them. The guide who, with his head in the air and his nose in a pocket handkerchief, takes you to see a battered bit of church, and never so much hints at the filthy village that surrounds it, is a maddening creature. That filthy village is far more important than any church: or than the pretty hamlet round its green five or ten miles away. The proud unhonoured struggle that goes on in ten thousand homes of the unemployed in the derelict villages and distressed towns of this region is far nobler and infinitely more important than any battles fought long ago between the Percy and the Douglas, than any love-sick ghost that walks on castle walls. So, whether the reader of this Guide likes it or not, I declare here and now that it is my intention not to let him pass, if I can help it, through these two counties without showing him something at least of the shameful ugliness and the social decay of some of its parts, as well as the delight and beauty of others. (p.6)
True to his word, this was particularly evident in the gazetteer for County Durham (and indeed future editions of the guide became exclusively concerned with Northumberland). He was discerning in his selection of colliery despoliation. Included in the gazetteer was, for example, Witton Park, that he had been so scathing about in A Derelict Area, and other gazetteer entries contain such statements as 'Meditate a while here, on man's inhumanity to man' (Sunnybrow, p.45) and 'Why does a civilised country tolerate the waste and ruin of whole communities such as this?' (West Auckland, p.46). In discussing Jarrow he stated 'All M.P's, all prosperous southerners and smug optimists should be made to spend a month here' (p.43). A description of the remarkable Saxon church at Escomb is followed by a description of the economic plight of the village. Having said all of that, Sharp was equally keen to establish the merits of the county, both in terms of the intrinsic qualities of the countryside and of those settlements not physically and economically ruined by industrialism and depression. As in the book chapter The North East - Hills and Hells, the entry on Durham was interesting in touching upon the planning issues that he was later to grapple with in Cathedral City and other Durham work.
The gazetteer for Northumberland was rather more like the nature that patrons of the Shell series must have been used to, as despite the occasional entry on coalfield settlements the general focus was much more on the agricultural and upland countryside and settlements. The Newcastle entry celebrated Grainger and the central area, seen as all the more remarkable given its late date and commercial use, and has a parenthetical swipe at modern development, 'Note for modern speculative builders: read Grainger's life, be ashamed, and base your future conduct on his' (p.26). Other relatively modern buildings commended by him included Dobson's Central Station and Robert Stephenson's High Level Bridge. The guide was well illustrated, including depictions of industrial grimness.