Bigg changes loomed large for the Geordie masses in 1970
THERE’S usually plenty going on in Newcastle’s Bigg Market, but here’s something you don’t often see down there these days –people listening to a public speaker.
Our photo captures a scene from 1970. Who knows what the gentlemen concerned were sounding off about 50 years ago?
Maybe it was that year’s General Election when, against all expectations, Ted Heath’s Tories were swept to power after ousting Harold Wilson and his Labour government?
Maybe it was the impending arrival of the decimal currency system which, in February of the following year, would consign shillings, half crowns, 10-bob notes and tanners to history?
Or maybe it was the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which had erupted into a major crisis and would continue to flare for years to come?
Certainly, this image from the Chronicle and Journal archive provides an interesting view of the Bigg Market as it was.
On the left in our picture stands a now-demolished building as we look up the Bigg Market and on to Newgate Street.
The multi-storey Swallow Hotel (and the adjacent Newgate Shopping Centre) had opened just a year earlier – but by 2016, the whole concrete-built complex was being razed to the ground. The new fourstar Maldron Hotel stands there today.
Elsewhere on the photograph are former shops, cafes and pubs – buildings which live on with new incarnations.
You can still go for a pint (lockdown permitting) in the Half Moon, but today it is a nightclub called Pop World.
Even where blokes used to be able
to ‘spend a penny’ in the underground loos, opened in 1898, has changed.
These days you can buy a cocktail or a glass of wine at the converted upmarket drinking hole there called, appropriately enough, WC.
As for public speaking at the Bigg Market, in 1970 it had been a tradition there for many years, but is one which has long since died out.
These days, it’s probably much easier for folk who want to spout off to turn on their computers and log on to Facebook or Twitter.
To explore your area’s past, check out our new Memory Lane project at www.memorylane.co.uk