I think in the world Newcastle would be famous above all else for one saying: ‘Bringing coals to Newcastle.’ This meant to imply that it was built on coal, they mined coal, they shipped coal, everybody worked in coal. And it seemed to me as a young fellow that this had to be changed.
Terence Daniel Smith
My wife Sarah visited me for a couple of days last week. One of the places we explored together was the Laing Gallery, and while there saw the ‘Essence of Nature’ exhibition. In my case, it was for the second time. In my piece 'Essence of Nature', I wrote of my first visit in June. After browsing the exhibition, we ventured into the Water Colour Gallery to see a collection of paintings of Newcastle in past years.
Captured in paint over the past two hundred years were several places I’ve written about previously. The painting of the Castle (see ‘New Castle’) shows it surrounded by the 18th Century shops and domestic dwellings that had sprung up around it. They are now long gone. There was St James’ Park (see ‘East Enders’), as I remembered from my first visits in the mid-1960s. Intriguingly the painting was from 1937, showing how little the football ground changed through the early 20th Century. Of course, St Nicholas Cathedral (see ‘Wonder Worker’) was there. That painting shows the uncluttered view of the time before the growth of the commercial buildings that now encircle it. And there too was Grainger Market (see ‘Grainger Market’), painted shortly after the market opened in 1835. Yet, it looks remarkably like that which one enters today. There was even a painting depicting the 'Great Fire of Newcastle' of 1854 (see 'Larn Yersel Geordie')
Browsing these paintings of Newcastle of yesteryear reminded me of a photographic exhibition I attended in Newcastle Library some months ago. Its title was ‘Gone but not Forgotten,’ and it was part of the 60th-anniversary celebration of the Newcastle City Guides Association. Newcastle City Council founded the Association in 1963 to conduct tours that would publicise the city to visitors and enlighten them and locals about its history.
All guides are volunteers from a wide range of backgrounds and occupations. Today they conduct an extensive range of tours. Some examples are ‘Newcastle Women in Wartime,’ ‘Fire and Strife’ (Newcastle’s role in the English Civil War), ‘Markets Old and New’ and ‘Newcastle’s Anti-Slavery Campaign’ (my piece on the great reforming Prime Minster - ‘Earl Grey … a bold flavour’ covered a little of that)
I’ve been on several City Guide tours over the past nine months. They are always information-rich, sometimes a little too rich (I’m more for anecdotes than details), but the guides are always keen to share as they offer an insight into the social history of Newcastle from Roman Times (when it was Pons Aelius) to the present day.
But back to that photographic exhibition that saddened me a little as it covered the disappearance of so many fine buildings across Newcastle over the last 60 years. It was sobering that all had gone in less than my lifetime.
A controversial figure central to the 1960s and early 1970s redevelopment in Newcastle was Thomas Daniel Smith, commonly known as T. Dan Smith, a charismatic and ambitious politician who, even today in Newcastle, is still a subject of fascination and debate. While Smith’s vision and determination brought about positive changes to the urban landscape of a city facing economic decline and decay, the controversies surrounding his political practices serve as a reminder of the ethical challenges that can go with ambitious development initiatives. While one can see the vibrant cultural centre that Newcastle now is as part of Smith's legacy, it’s a legacy marred by controversy.
T Dan Smith served as the leader of the Newcastle City Council from 1959 to 1965, and he advocated for modernisation and urban renewal through a series of ambitious projects and initiatives. The city's deteriorating infrastructure and housing stock were at the forefront of his concerns, and his approach involved a mixture of public and private investment. His projects brought about the modernisation of housing estates, the creation of new commercial spaces, and the development of cultural and recreational facilities. He didn’t limit his efforts to infrastructure alone, as he championed initiatives promoting arts, heritage, and education. Establishing the Newcastle University campus in the city centre exemplifies this.
However, as Smith’s political influence grew, so did allegations of corruption and financial impropriety. The funding for Smith's ambitious projects was through complex financial arrangements that came under scrutiny. Found guilty of corruption charges in 1974, he served time in prison, thus casting a shadow over his contribution to Newcastle's urban transformation.
One of the buildings to go was the Free Library, from which those first Newcastle City Guides set out in 1963. It was demolished in 1967 as part of the development of the street on which the Laing Gallery sits. The ‘Princess Square’ library replaced the ‘Free’, but like many of the 1960s ‘new builds’, it lasted less than 40 years before the fine new library that sits on the site today replaced it.
One quirky item also demolished at this time was a footbridge over Newcastle’s Northumberland Street that allowed pedestrians to avoid dicing with death when crossing that traffic-busy street. The opening of a motorway ‘bypass’ around Newcastle significantly reduced traffic flow through the city, and indeed today, a significant part of Northumberland Street is pedestrianised.
As happened through the late 20th Century in many cities and towns across the UK, Newcastle saw several cinemas demolished or repurposed. One that opened as the Paramount in 1931 before becoming the Odeon disappeared in 2017. Replacing it for a while was, at the time, a growing shopping phenomenon of using shipping containers as retail outlets. While that initiative in Newcastle has gone, and a new, more permanent development is ongoing, the concept still exists in some towns and cities. For instance, at Bristol’s Wapping Wharf, 'Cargo 1’. From my visit there a few years ago, I saw restaurants and various shops selling diverse items, from cider to cheese to clothing, successfully out of containers.
Of course, cinemas aren't the only places of 'entrainment' and leisure that have disappeared from many villages, towns and cities across the UK. The same is true of many, many pubs. Newcastle is no exception. One of the oldest was Bourgoynes dating from the 1600s. It disappeared to make way for a new retail area—an ever-familiar story, although the current economic climate is now proving a challenge for those outlets.
It wasn’t just pubs that disappeared; Newcastle lost its iconic Scottish and Newcastle Brewery—the original home of Newcastle Brown Ale—first brewed there in 1927. The brewery stood close to St James’ Park, and on some match days, the heady sweet smell of malt would waft over the ground. These days the site is part of Newcastle University.
Although it still carries the Newcastle name, brewing the beer for sale in the European market is now in Yorkshire. The beer intended for the USA is to a different recipe, and that beer is brewed in Amsterdam. I’m not overly worried about the ‘loss’ of the beer. I always preferred the other brown ale of the Northeast, Vaux Brewery's 'Double Maxim'. And that's still brewed in the Northeast. Not at the Vaux brewery, which disappeared from Sunderland a couple or more decades ago, but in a small brewery about six miles from Sunderland set up by some directors of Vaux. Unlike Newcastle Brown Ale, I suspect Double Maxim is unknown outside the northeast. The writer and journalist Roger Protz describes it as “An undoubted classic. It is a fine example of a North East brown ale. It is a good balance of ripe grain and spicy hops, with a long bittersweet finish.” I’d certainly recommend trying it.
Eldon Square sits near the heart of Newcastle. The original Georgian design was for three terraces (East, West and North) facing a central square. Each terrace was of two and a half storeys with a continuous cast-iron balcony around the first storey and Grecian honeysuckle decoration. At the end of each terrace were giant Doric pilasters. The building of the terraces took place between 1825 and 1832 as part of the late Georgian reconstruction of the city centre, but by the 1960s, the best days of the terraces were far behind them. Demolishing two sides of the once grand square allowed the development of the Eldon Square shopping centre in the 1970s, with the refurbishment of the third. Two nearby markets also disappeared in the building of the new shopping centre: the fruit and vegetable market (The Green Market) and the Fish Market.
Blackfriars is one ancient site in the centre of Newcastle that survived the building ‘cull.’ As the name suggests, it was once a Dominican Friary built in the 13th Century. After the reformation, with the friars ‘pensioned off,’ various guilds took over the site as a meeting place. By the 1970s, however, it was in a deplorable state. Still, the City Council decided to renovate rather than decimate it. Its primary occupant today is an excellent Fine Dining restaurant called, unsurprisingly, 'Blackfriars.'
Of all the losses, though, the loss of the Tatler Cartoon Cinema brings back the most memories for me. The building was originally a café but then altered in the late 1930s into a 500-seat Newsreel Cinema with a café above. My first visit there with my father would have been in 1963. I’ve shared that we did not have a TV at home until the late 1960s, so my father would visit the 'news theatres' to watch the latest news. Interspersed with that news were cartoons, so as father and son, we enjoyed visiting the Tatler. He was happy to watch both the news and cartoons but unsurprisingly, given my age, my interest waned during the news features. Instead, I would gaze upward, watching the Brownian movement of cigarette smoke dancing amongst the lights of the projector. After we’d watched, he would treat me to an ice cream soda in the café. The old-fashioned kind - when a lump of ice cream is dropped into a glass of lemonade. A treat he regretted one time when some of the ice cream soda appeared into the world again as we sat on the bus home. By 1969, the Tatler was one of only four news theatres left in the country, but by 1980, it was gone, and the site now hosts a large M&S outlet.
However, that spot still gives me pleasure as, by my estimation, the M&S wine section sits around that spot where, once upon a time, I watched Jerry outsmart Tom when not watching light dancing through swirling tobacco smoke.
Harry, this is no nicely done. I felt as though I were walking with you as a guide. Thank you for sharing.
On a slightly different note Harry, I have just read your first publication here on Substack! I have decided to start from the beginning and work through to catch up however I can't comment on the post itself, so I am commenting here instead. I hope this is ok? I wanted to say that it was a very enjoyable read and so eloquently written. No wonder you write so well, you have been consciously writing for years, and it has certainly paid off! I am looking forward to publication number 2.