This is just off Northumberland Street, on what I think is called Prudhoe Chare (outside the Northumberland Arms). (The definition of Chare is here if you are interested - it’s a dialect word for a narrow street or alley.) I’ve no idea what the heads or the ‘1881′ represent - can anyone enlighten me?
There are two more pics - one shows a few more plaques here and the other (a bit dark but shows them all) is here.
visits
since April 2006.
i was told all those bits up there were the architectural twiddly bits of the building that used to stand on the site that were too nice to throw away when they knocked it down.
Another fascinating picture, according to the Newcastle Walks site “the date (1881) was originally in the Y.M.C.A. Blackett Street. The heads were originally on the walls of the old Central Library and the remaining carvings were part of the old Town Hall.” I hate to disagree with the experts but the 1881 plaque looks remarkably like the one from the old Central Library.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/newcastlelibraries/4081690502/
I dug out my reference book on public sculpture in Newcastle and it identifies the three central characters as Bewick, Stephenson and Collingwood.
I followed the link and looked at t’others.
Yup some of them decorated building is Eldon Square, some of them came from the Royal Arcade.
The tale goes that they took the RA down stone by stone, numbered them and then stored them, ready to be put into the restored RA. Time comes to put them back, they can’t find them. Yonks later they found them and all the numbers were washed off.
Mind that could be ‘Geordie Folk Lore’ just like the biggest salt cellar in the world for the fish and chips!!!
Fantastic! Thank you all so much for putting this all together for me. I knew that if I asked here people would be able to tell me :)
Mrs K, I think I’d read something like that … maybe on timmonet (incidentally, if you’ve never explored that site do - it’s got some amazing pics of newcastle).
i’ve heard that thing about the biggest salt cellar in the world but can’t think for the life of me what it refers to - please can you enlighten me?!? thank you :)
Grey’s Monument.
The old joke is that an American came over and everything he was taken to see, his answer was ‘oh we have bigger in the States’. Geordie got so fed up then when he came to show him the monument he said, ‘beat that its the biggest salt cellar in the World’.
that’s it! thanks mrs k :)