City’s ‘lost’ Palace Theatre
ONLY older readers will remember Newcastle’s Palace Theatre. It sat on Percy Street in the Haymarket area for nearly 70 years, but there’s no sign of it today.
Its rise and fall was matched by that of the many musical and variety acts which toured the British provinces in the first five or six decades of the last century.
By the late 1950s, the growth of television and changing tastes and fashions was calling time on theatres up and down the land.
Across the city on Newgate Street, the much-loved Empire Theatre closed in 1963 after acts there had entertained the folk of Tyneside for 73 years.
Other ‘lost’ theatres in Newcastle included the Olympia Theatre, Northumberland Road (1893-1971); the Grand Theatre, Byker (1896-1969); and the Pavilion Theatre, Westgate Road (1903-1990).
The Palace opened two days before Christmas in 1895. The massive auditorium could seat around 3,000 customers. It was built on three levels - stalls pit, and circle - and had four plush boxes for the more well-heeled.
By the 1950s, acts at the Palace Theatre included everybody from a young Des O’Connor to popular Scottish-themed pantomimes.
Years later, one reader told us: “We used to go the Palace Theatre if there were no seats left at the Empire, as it wasn’t as upmarket.”
Another remembered how “the Palace audience could be tough on a Friday or Saturday night”.
After closing in 1958, the Palace lay empty before finally being demolished in 1961. Today, a row of small shops stands on the site where thousands flocked across the decades.