The Adelaide Hotel was built on the corner of Elm Street and Adelaide Terrace in 1903. In the early 1970s, prior to demolition, the licence was transferred to the Adelaide PH on the first floor of the Adelaide Shopping Centre. A 1985 directory described it as the 'West End drinking haven' where regulars were from an older age grounp. The second Adelaide had its licence revoked in 1996.

The Benwell Hotel was granted a full licence after its acquisition by Simson and McPherson before the turn of the century. It was altered and extended on the basis of plans drawn up in 1889 by architects Oliver Leeson & Wood. The most obvious change was the impressive new frontage of stone bay windows and parapet. A stone carving on the side of the building is dated 1901. Internally, the pub had bars at the front, a sitting room behind and a room described as a 'private room for the football club'. Upstairs there was a billiard room and a club room. In 1935 further alterations moved a kitched from the ground floor to the first floor, created a buffet in the space provided and enlarged the bar.

The Gold Cup opened in 1973 and was named after the steeplechase sponsered by Whitbread. Now the Metropolitan Bar.

The Chieftain opened in the Cruddas Park Shopping Centre in 1969 by Newcastle Breweries. The Chieftain commemorated the tanks made at Vicker's Elswick Works. It was a two-roomed pub with a distinct military theme. The 842 square ft bar had a photo mural of the interior of a Chieftain tank, and the 1116 sq ft lounge features the silhoutte of a 120mm gun against a brightly camouflaged background as the back fitment to the bar.

The Tower Public House on Mitford Street. Closed in 1917.

A simple centrally-planned modern church of the mid 1970s, which replaced an earlier church in a converted barn, of sixteenth or seventeenth century date (which survives nearby as the parish hall).


The presbytery of the parish was originally Dockendale Hall, a sixteenth century building (now demolished), and the church was at first housed in a converted barn of the same period, extended to accommodate a growing congregation. In the early 1970s a new church and presbytery were built adjacent to the barn, which now serves as a parish hall . The church was designed on a tight budget of £52,000 and was intended to seat 350 people. It was opened in August 1973.

The church is in a modern style with a single storey skirt surrounding a central pyramid containing a large glazed opening. The walls are faced with buff-coloured brick. The concealed main roof is felted, while the pyramid is covered with clay tiles. The principal front of the church has a vertical copper-covered fascia above a glazed timber entrance screen; otherwise the external walls are almost wholly blind.

Internally the church is a single low flat-ceilinged space with plain plastered walls centred on the sanctuary area which is lit from the pyramid above. The fittings appear to be contemporary with the church.

Former stable in south-east corner of the Roman Catholic church grounds. It has paired entrances with a small square opening to the right and a larger square opening to the first floor. To the left there is a narrow opening. Entrances have narrow boarded doors. Other openings are fitted with boarded panels. The west gable has an inserted double garage door.

An early twentieth-century neo-Romanesque church serving the Tyne Dock area, built by the Hull practice of Brodrick, Lowther & Walker. The church has landmark value due to its location high above Boldon Lane. It has historical associations with the local author Catherine Cookson.


In the second half of the nineteenth century, the area around Tyne Dock expanded noticeably, with the growth of local industries such as glass-making, ship building and heavy engineering. The mission was started on 14 December 1884, with Mass being said in the basement of the Exchange Buildings in Whitehead Street by Fr Kirwan from St Bede’s, Jarrow. A school-chapel (on a site to the east of the later presbytery) was opened on 28 July 1889. The architect was Charles Walker and the contractor Mr Hope, both of Newcastle. The cost of the site was £500 and of the building £3,501. Walker also built the presbytery which was completed in June 1893. In 1897, the site for the school was bought for £380.

The foundation stone for the present church was laid on 23 September 1905 by Auxiliary Bishop Collins. It was opened on 8 July 1906. The architects were Messrs Brodrick, Lowther & Walker of Hull. The builder was James Young of Tyne Dock. The author Dame Catherine Cookson (1906-98) attended both church and school in the 1910s, before she left school at the age of twelve. The high altar was blessed by Bishop Thorman on 30 October 1930, when the church was also consecrated. The altar was erected as a memorial to eighty parishioners who died in the Great War and was made of fifteen different kinds of marble by Almando Batelli of Tuscany (fig. 1).

In 1984, for the church’s centenary, the sanctuary was reordered. The altar was moved forward and a new ambo and chair were created out of the marble from the altar steps (by Morris’s Marbleworks of Whickham, Newcastle). The architects for the reordering were Dietz & Lyons of Jesmond. The new altar was dedicated by Bishop Lindsay on 27 September 1984. In the 1990s, Catherine Cookson donated some stained glass windows, as well as the heating system.

The church faces northeast; this description follows conventional liturgical orientation, i.e. as if the altar was in the east.

The church is built in red brick in English bond and has a slate roof. The plan is longitudinal, with an aisled nave and an apsed sanctuary with side chapels. The west elevation has three round-headed stepped lancets above a recessed doorway. Internally, there is an organ gallery above the narthex which is separated from the nave by a glazed timber partition (1980s or 1990s). The three west windows have modern stained glass of 2006. The four-bay nave has a timber barrel vault with the round-headed clerestory windows (two per bay) breaking through the base of the vault. The arches of the nave arcade are chamfered and grooved with a hoodmould above them. They rest on octagonal stone pillars. The aisles have lean-to roofs.

The north aisle has modern stained glass depicting ecclesiastical symbols in each of the round-headed windows (two per bay). At the northwest is a statue of Our Lady of the Rosary. At the east end of the north aisle is the Lady Chapel with timber arcaded rails, a large statue of St Teresa, and a timber altar and reredos with a statue of the Virgin Mary. Three east windows depict the cross flanked by two windows with the Marian monogram ‘M’. The sanctuary has the original marble high altar (1930, Almando Batelli) with the altar table moved forward in 1984. The five-sided apse has five windows with stained glass of four saints flanking the Crucifixion, the latter donated by the Rev. James Bradley (parish priest 1899-1914) in memory of his parents. The marble chair and lectern date from 1984 but were made from marble from the original high altar steps. On either side of the chancel arch are statues of SS Peter and Paul. The foundation stone of 1905 is set into the lower left apse wall.

The southeast chapel is dedicated to the Sacred Heart and has a timber altar and reredos which are similar to those in the Lady Chapel. In front of the reredos is a statue of the Sacred Heart, with a statue of St Joseph on the south wall. The three windows behind the reredos have modern stained glass of ecclesiastical symbols and local references (miners’ lamp, Tyne Dock cranes etc). In front of the Sacred Heart altar stands the font consisting of an octagonal white marble bowl on eight columns of differently coloured marbles and an alabaster base (donated by Mr & Mrs John Kennedy, 1906). The south aisle has a confessional and modern stained glass depicting the six Works of Mercy. The Stations of the Cross are painted on canvas and framed in carved timber frames.

Built in the 1950s to serve a housing estate, this is a modest design with some typical features of its time.

The parish was erected in 1937 to serve an area of new housing. The present church was built in 1958 from designs by E.A. Gunning. It has since been altered.

The orientation has been turned through forty five degrees, so that ritual east is actually facing south; this description follows conventional liturgical orientation. In order to keep the church on the same level as its approach, concrete piers support the building. The church walls are finished in roughcast cement render, while the roof is covered in single-membrane PVC. The nave windows project in oriel fashion, so that the eaves have a zig-zag plan and the resulting projections rise to meet tapered sloping roofs. A simple elongated pyramid flèche stands on a short rod over the ridge of the sanctuary. There is a short sloping path down to the west narthex, with a projecting canopy over double doors.

Inside, the roof has a shallow parabolic profile with recessed diagonally-ribbed plaster coffering over the sanctuary. The inward-tapering ambo of dark stone is raised on two steps, while a third leads to the altar of similar stone and the snecked stone canted support for the central tabernacle. A timber-clad font with wide timber cover stands below the sanctuary steps. The pews are well made, with back rails and solid ends.

The church was built in 1923 to serve the ‘thriving and virile Catholic population’ (Northern Catholic Calendar, 1936) of this poor mining district.

The church is a simple rectangular structure with walls of brick, faced with render and a pitched roof covered with artificial slate. Attached to the main church building is a flat roofed porch/vestibule across the west front and a flat-roofed sacristy at the east end of the north side. The side walls have rectangular opening with upvc windows. The interior is a single undivided space with a glazed lobby at the west end. The walls are plastered, the windows clear-glazed. The original timber open roof structure was ceiled with boarding some twenty years ago (information from Fr O’Gorman).