City building
ANYONE who is familiar with Newcastle city centre can’t fail to have noticed the work that’s taking place in Pilgrim Street and the wider area.
The place is undergoing a major transformation which will, says Newcastle City Council, “provide a huge economic boost, securing a vibrant future for our city centre for generations to come”.
The unpopular eyesore,
Commercial Union House, has recently been torn down, paving the way for a new £155m HMRC office complex to be built.
Demolition work has also seen the removal of the Stack shipping container leisure village and the former Dex car park.
Bamburgh House in Market Street will also be bulldozed and so too will the interior of the listed Carliol
House, though its Art Deco facade will be incorporated into the new development.
Slightly further south, around Worswick Street, the former bus station, taxi office, NCP garage and Wilders bar have all been making way for the massive regeneration.
One building in that area of the city that will remain standing but will be refurbished is the Grade Ii-listed Worswick Chambers on the corner of Worswick Street and Pilgrim Street. It’s a building that holds a surprise – or, in fact, 25 surprises.
Newcastle local historian and photographer Steve Ellwood, who has been kindly sharing some of his work with Chroniclelive, reveals a striking feature of the building that many will be unaware of.
He says: “There are 25 sculptured heads on Worswick Chambers and House which have been obscured by scaffolding and plastic mesh for many years. It’s certainly a Newcastle curiosity and one not a lot of folk might know about.”
Here is a selection of the 25 heads photographed by Steve.
It’s a fine building, but one many will have walked by without giving it a second glance.
Steve points out: “Worswick House and Chambers were built in two phases, 1891 and 1898, to a design by Newcastle Architect W Lister Newcombe for Alderman George Grieg Archibold. Minor alterations were made to the building in 1900.
“The faces were sculptured by
John Rogers, from Heaton, who worked for the firm of Robert Beall, stonemasons of Castle Yard near the High Level Bridge.
“He was supposed to base the sculptures on famous people, but instead used his family photograph album as models for the heads. Similar designs can also be seen on a building at the corner of Bigg Market and Grainger Street.”
Carved stone heads on buildings became a fashionable architectural trend during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, before falling out of at the onset of the Great War.
Recently, with the ongoing redevelopment of the wider area, Worswick House has been under renovation and the restricted view was removed for a while, allowing those ‘in the know’ to see and photograph the carved heads – but the scaffolding and covering has returned over the last week or two.