A busier time in one of city’s most trodden streets
NEWCASTLE’S Clayton Street certainly looked busier back in our 1950s image than it does these days.
And what about all the cars parked toe-to-toe 60-odd years ago? You wouldn’t get that in 2021.
Back then, the street was associated with its many clothes and furniture shops.
It was named after John Clayton who, along with builder Richard Grainger and architect John Dobson, in the early 19th century helped shape the Newcastle city centre we know and love today.
The trio all have streets named after them, of course.
Clayton was the long-serving Town
Clerk and antiquarian who helped ease through various legal issues as Grainger pursued his grand neoclassical building vision.
Mainly consisting of shops and houses, Clayton Street was one of the final parts of Grainger’s radical redevelopment of Newcastle, and was completed by around 1841.
Grainger actually had a family home and offices in the street for some years.
It runs from the city centre, past the Grainger Market down into Clayton Street West, which has a junction with Westgate Road and, further on, a junction with Westmorland Road, near the Central Station.
When it was built, it joined up with Blackett Street, making a formal approach to the original Eldon Square.
St Mary’s Cathedral, built in 1844, is the street’s most striking building while, in more recent times, the popular store Woolworth closed its doors in early 2009.
Clayton Street’s northern stretch sits next to the site of the former 1960s-built Newgate Shopping Centre, which in turn was built on the site of the Victorian-built Empire theatre that was knocked down in 1963
The Maldron Hotel stands on the site today.