Angel of the North

Antony Gormley's sculpture was installed in 1998 on a mound at Low Fell, where a colliery bath house stood until the 1980s, over workings where men had cut coal for two centuries; Gormley said the figure marks that transition from industry to something else. It is twenty metres tall with a wingspan of fifty-four metres, wider than a Boeing 757, and the wings are angled forward by three and a half degrees to create what he called a sense of embrace. It is built of weathering steel that rusts to a stable brown skin, weighs around two hundred tonnes and is anchored into concrete piles twenty metres deep to hold it against wind. It was widely disliked locally before installation and is now the region's accepted symbol. Around ninety thousand vehicles pass it daily on the A1.

What you'll find

• The scale - twenty metres tall with a fifty-four-metre wingspan.
• The angled wings - tilted forward three and a half degrees.
• The weathering steel - a rust skin that stabilises rather than corroding through.
• The colliery site - a mound over the foundations of a pit bath house.

When to go

Year-round; it is free and always accessible. Low sun in early morning or late afternoon brings out the rust colour and the ribbed surface. Wind on the hill is constant.

What to expect

The car park is small and fills on weekends, and the site is right beside a major road, so it is loud. There are no facilities of any kind. The mound is muddy in wet weather. Climbing on the sculpture is not permitted.

Nearby

Gateshead and Newcastle quayside are a short drive; Beamish lies south.

Key facts