100 years of gents’ relief in Bigg Market
PLANS TO OPEN WINE BAR IN DISUSED LOOS
MANY of us – of a male persuasion – answered the call of nature here. For more than 100 years, the gentlemen of Newcastle could descend a set of winding steps to ‘spend a penny’ in these subterranean city centre toilets.
The loos in the Bigg Market closed in 2012 and have remained locked up and deserted since.
But the Chronicle recently revealed how a new company has been formed with plans to take on the derelict toilets and transform them into a wine bar.
A Newcastle-based company wants to open from 11am to 11pm Monday to Wednesday, with a 2am closing time on Fridays and Saturdays, and midnight on Thursdays and Sundays.
The disused site has 18 urinals, five cubicles, a cupboard and tiled walls and floor.
The Geordie chaps who first used the newly-opened public convenience in 1898 lived in a world utterly different from today’s.
Queen Victoria had been on the throne for 61 years, and the Marquess of Salisbury was Prime Minister.
Abroad, the strength of the British Empire was bolstered by a major military victim at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan.
At home, HG Wells’ novel The War Of The Worlds was published, and Harrods department store in London installed the UK’s first escalator.
In our region, coal mines, shipyards and factories boomed in the smoky, banging and clanking Tyneside industrial powerhouse.
Meanwhile, Newcastle United – formed just six years earlier – would soon emerge as one of English football’s finest teams. On Christmas Eve, 1898, the Magpies travelled to newly-opened Roker Park where they beat fierce rivals Sunderland 3-2 in the first competitive Tyne and Wear derby.
Since the ‘flying saucer’ toilets were boarded up six years ago when Newcastle City Council could no longer afford to keep them open, there have been suggestions the site could reopen as a restaurant, coffee shop, flexible office space – and now a wine bar. Sound like fun!
The former Bigg Market loos are just one of the vanished old public WCs around Newcastle which included the Side, Shakespeare Street, High Bridge and the Quayside.
Nationally, around 1,800 public toilets have closed across Britain over the last decade. At a time of Government spending cuts, many councils have chosen to close them because they are simply too expensive to operate.