High Street, institute

This Working Men's Institute had a reading room, library and meeting rooms. The large clock was a benefit to railway passengers at the nearby station. The clock mechanism stopped working when the institute was hit by lighting {Rippeth 1993}. Built by Thomas Spencer in 1884 as an institute for the workers of Spencer & Sons' Steelworks, which was operational from 1810 to 1929. The building was later used as a club, snooker hall, dole office then a residential care home. The institute provided baths, lavatories and washing facilities in the basement. On the ground floor there were meeting and games rooms and a library. There was a large lecture hall on the first floor. Recorded in 2006 due to proposed demolition - brick building of eight bays in Flemish bond. Decorated with terracotta bands and decorative raised brick courses on its east and south faces. The north and west sides, which were away from the public gaze, are plainer. The building is rectangular, with an ornamental east front flanked by two pyramidal-roofed towers. The central door has a sandstone surround under a carved brick inscription with the monogram TS for Thomas Spencer and the date AD 1884. The stone staircase that led to this door has been replaced by a modern conservatory. In the south wall there is a second inscription on a foundation stone which reads 'THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY MRS WILBERFORCE OF BENWELL TOWER ON THE 1ST MARCH 1884'. Mrs Wilberforce was the wife of Dr Ernest Roland Wilberforce, the first Bishop of Newcastle upon Tyne. On the south wall the ground and first floors are separated by terracotta panels, decorated with a stylized mistletoe motif, between moulded brick string courses, the lower with a dentil course. The ground floor windows have sandstone sills and lintels. Apart from a pair of segmental-arched windows in the westernmost bays, the basement openings are small. The lower part of the wall has been cemnet rendered. The first floor windows have stone sills and shallow segmental arches of tapered stretchers in soft fine red bricks. In the jambs, these bricks form mouldings that run round the arches. Between the second and third and the fourth and fifth bays from the east end, there are shallow projecting flue-backs. These rise from moulded brackets near the top of the ground floor windows and are decorated with projecting vertical ribs of brick headers. The chimneys have been removed. A clear straight joint in the north wall suggests that the western bay is an addition to the building. The joint coincides with an usually thick internal wall. There are signs of a blocked up ground floor window in the fourth bay. The east face is the principal façade. Square towers at either side are lit by single windows. There are recessed lancets above. Between the towers there are two rows of three arched windows, set between pilasters. The upper row might have lit a gallery at the back of the main hall. There is a Potts clock in a brick and sandstone oculus at the centre of the gable. The mechanism is still in place. It is driven by a weight consisting of a galvanized can for water or sand, suspended from the top of the first truss in the roof space. Above the clock is a stepped cornice of moulded brick. The terracotta decoration runs across the face of the building above the front door, where the motif is a stylized poppy-head. The faces of the tower are decorated with projecting bands of soft red brick. Inside the original staircase survives, with an open string with simple decoration on the ends of each step. Some original balusters survive. The banister has gone but the newel knob is set on a new post. There is a cornice in the ground floor lobby. From the lobby, a central passage ran west to a large room and to either side of the passage there were smaller rooms with fireplaces. Upastairs the landing gave access to a large hall. The very thick wall at the west end of this room has doors in its north and south ends, implying a central stage. The roof trusses have toe beams that are supported by iron rods, hung from square plates bolted through the apex of the principal rafters. LOCAL LIST