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From page 4 of the Shields Daily Gazette, 10 March 1884 - an article headed Wallsend Redivivus

During the many years of depression prior to 1879 the land remained vacant, but on the revival of trade about that date the company began to consider the utilization of the land and decided to commence the erection of workmen’s dwellings.  The “housing of the poor” a question which in various circles has of late been much commented upon, has always been with employers of labour brought daily into contact with their workmen a matter of deep consideration, and, in many cases, of practical effort.  A scheme was formulated, Mr Palmer himself suggesting that its basis should be the providing of self-contained dwelling houses for working men, each house having a separate yard securing privacy and banishing these eternal bickerings regarding washing day “turns” &c which form the casus belli of many a domestic struggle.  Arrangements were made whereby the erection of a large number of houses at one time might so reduce the cost as to enable the promoters to offer each working man a house, at a price, which, through a building society he could purchase through weekly or monthly payments, in many cases scarcely equalling the rent hitherto paid for a decent dwelling. … The result of this scheme was that on the Palmer estate alone there has been erected upwards of one hundred neat and commodious dwellings occupied by working men and in a few years to become their own property “for all time”. 

There is quite a bit more in the article about the early development of Wallsend.

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