Anyone who rubbed shoulders with the Newcastle music scene in the 1980s and '90s will doubtless remember this place.
This was the Broken Doll pub on Blenheim Street photographed 35 years ago in April 1988. A popular haunt for students from nearby Newcastle College, it also functioned as a notable local gig venue where countless bands - from blues, to punk, to alternative - honed their chops in front of a live audience seven nights a week.
Many of us will remember 'the Doll' as a raucous, earthy, rough-around-the-edges bar with a friendly, mixed crowd. It also sold a mean pint of highly-potent Slalom D lager. Inside, the walls were plastered with posters advertising local groups, and outside there was often a row of impressive motorbikes parked up.
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But long before the punks, students, bikers and blues fans came calling, it was a traditional Tyneside boozer called the Coach and Horses. According to Newcastle local historian Steve Ellwood, a pub was built on this site at Blenheim Street in around 1850. It was rebuilt in 1903 and later came under the ownership of Richard Charlton Ltd, the business which also ran Charlton’s Bond on Thornton Street.
It became the Broken Doll in the summer of 1982 after being taken over by the Matthew Brown Brewery . By the early 1990s, the pub was threatened with demolition, finally succumbing to the developers' wrecking ball in the middle of the decade - yet another Victorian/Edwardian-built Newcastle bar razed to oblivion.
Today there’s no sign of the old watering hole - only the constant roar of traffic on nearby St James’ Boulevard making its way in and out of Newcastle.
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