A famous city-centre meeting place
SIXTY-FIVE years ago - and it was a busy weekend shopping day in central Newcastle. We see, in our main photograph, people and traffic competing for space at the corner of Blackett Street.
It was a bit quieter when our 2018 picture of the same location was taken.
In both images, we see the famous golden clock of Northern Goldsmiths jewellery store. For decades, shoppers, revellers and lovers have used the clock as a city centre meeting place.
The store itself has sat on the corner of Pilgrim Street and Blackett Street since 1892 - the same year Newcastle United was formed just up the road.
It was once the head office of several other Goldsmiths stores around the region, before the company’s expansion throughout the UK.
Back then, as a small family business founded by a Northumbrian called Thomas Cooke, it supplied Newcastle-made watches and marine chronometers to the Admiralty during the Great War from its workshop.
It managed to thrive during the austere years of post-war Britain, and is renowned today as a leader in the luxury watch market.
In 1935, the company installed the iconic golden clock – with a metallic lady Venus adorning a Rolex clock, her outstretched arms symbolising progress and finished in 24ct gold leaf.
The clock, which chimes every 15 minutes, has been the scene of numerous proposals over the years. It is still sometimes referred to locally as “the kissing clock” by old romantics.
Our third image shows a picturepostcard view of Blackett Street from the early years of the last century and a time before Northern Goldsmiths installed the clock.
For the folk in our 1953 photograph, eight years after the end of World War II, the country was slowly on the mend.
This was the year when children in the region welcomed the end of sweet rationing, and it was a time when the unemployment of later decades hadn’t yet raised its ugly head.
Living standards were on the rise. For those who could afford it, a new house would set you back £2,000. At the shops, 20 cigarettes would cost 22p (in today’s money), 1lb of cheese was 12p, a dozen eggs was 23p, and 1lb of butter was 10p.
Those were the days...