The Lost Buildings of North Shields

Every old town carries a shadow map of the buildings it has lost, and North Shields, with its centuries of fishing, shipbuilding and slum clearance, carries more than most. Theatres, churches, a whole Georgian square and one of the great Tyne shipyards have all gone within living memory or a little beyond. Here is our guide to some of the most notable lost buildings of North Shields.

The vanished theatres and cinemas

North Shields once had a lively culture of variety halls and picture houses, and most of them are now gone. The Boro' Theatre on Lower Rudyard Street began as a circus around 1900, was rebuilt as a grand variety theatre and cinema seating some two thousand people, and entertained the town for half a century before closing in 1957 and being demolished in 1969. The Comedy Theatre on Saville Street West had an even longer pedigree, growing out of an 1890s hall through a string of names before ending its days as a cinema, demolished in 1958. The old Prince's, later the Gaumont, survives in altered form, subdivided almost beyond recognition after the cinema closed in 1976.

St Peter's, the sailor's church

Built in 1863 in the lower part of town, St Peter's was known as the sailor's church and later served the town's Scandinavian community as a Lutheran chapel. It was swept away in the slum clearances of the 1930s and replaced by a factory. Remarkably, when archaeologists dug on the site in 2007 they found its walls and a mosaic floor still lying just over a metre below the ground.

Dockwray Square and the streets of the bank

The single greatest change to the historic townscape was the loss of the crowded streets on the bank above the Fish Quay. Dockwray Square, laid out in 1763 as an elegant Georgian square, decayed over the years into notorious slum tenements, its grand houses subdivided and overcrowded. The old square was demolished in 1956 and replaced in 1963 by multi-storey flats around a green. The Dockwray Square of today is a later layout, not the Georgian original, and the tight riverside streets that surrounded it are effectively gone.

Smith's Dock

For more than a century, Smith's Dock dominated the riverside east of the town. The yard opened at North Shields in 1851 and built and repaired well over nine hundred vessels before it closed in 1987. Left derelict through the 1990s, the site was eventually cleared and reclaimed, and now carries the housing development that keeps the Smith's Dock name. Its closure marked the end of large-scale shipwork on this stretch of the Tyne.

The High Brewery

North Shields was also a brewing town. The High Brewery on Duke Street, built in 1871, was one of the five firms that merged in 1890 to form Newcastle Breweries. Most of it has long gone, though its 1871 bonded warehouse survives, converted to flats as Brewery Bond, a rare working reminder of the trade.

What still stands

Not everything feared lost has actually gone. The old Town Hall by John Dobson still stands on Howard Street, adapted for new uses, and the Northumberland Arms, long known as the Jungle, survives as apartments rather than rubble. They are reminders that, for all it has lost, North Shields still holds a great deal of its history in plain sight.

More North Shields history

For more, see our guides to the history of North Shields' high street, the North Shields heritage trail and the interesting facts about North Shields.

Remember a North Shields building that has been lost? Get in touch.