iPad crashing when viewing newspaper sites

Sometimes it crashes before loading the site and very often it does so at regular intervals while I'm trying to read an article. Sometimes the screen goes black for perhaps 30 seconds before coming back on with the start-up screen, the one after putting the security password in with all the icons for Safari, email, photos, WhatsApp etc, in which case I have to go back to the site from the beginning via Safari > etc. etc. Other times the page just reloads. It's been like that for a couple of years and suddenly I'm pissed off with it.

The iPad has 16gb and has 1.5gb left. Is getting rid of stored photos going to help?

Unless you have a lot of tabs open in Safari - then I would say the first thing to do, is liberate more space.

Transfer as much of the music/photo/video files as possible and see if that helps.