King John's Palace, Oakwellgate

Shown on Thompson's plan of 1746. Large building at the south end of Oakwellgate, known as Palace Place when sold in 1586. Lumley (1932) says the house stood at the southern extremity of Oakwellgate until quite recently. "A dismal old stone house, black with smoke and age and having a crudely carved head projecting from one of the gable ends" [now in the Public Library]. "This miserable looking place was known as King John's Palace, owing to the traditional belief that this monarch slept here while visiting Newcastle". Boyle dismissed this tradition, and said that the house may have been on the site of an old manor-house of the Bishop, as it adjoined the episcopal domains and probably owed its name to the fact that it was once called "Palace Green". In the seventeenth century it was part of the residence of the Gateshead Coles.