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Chronicle Live
Chronicle Live
National
David Morton

Two views of St Thomas' in Newcastle's Barras Bridge separated by 130 years

Two Newcastle city centre images from around 130 years apart...

Apart from the inevitable heavy traffic of the 21st century, the views are broadly similar.

The Church of St Thomas the Martyr, on the junction of Barras Bridge and St Mary's Place, is a familiar sight for those travelling into the city along the Great North Road.

The 19th century church is built on the site of a medieval chapel, traditionally said to have been created by one of the assassins of Thomas Becket.

Later still, there is said to have been a hospital for lepers here, which was dedicated to Mary Magdalene.

St Thomas's, one of Newcastle's more striking buildings, was built in the late 1820s by John Dobson, the brilliant architect who, along with builder Richard Grainger, was the brains behind the renaissance of the town in the early decades of the 19th century.

Back at the time the church was built, Newcastle was beginning to fill in most of its attractive denes to make room for the ever-expanding town.

Meanwhile, this corner would have been a busy one.

St Thomas The Martyr Church, Barras Bridge, Newcastle, in recent times (Newcastle Chronicle)

Mail and stage coaches to and from Edinburgh, Alnwick, Morpeth, Berwick, Durham and York would all have crossed the nearby Barras Bridge daily, as would the booming numbers of private and hackney coaches.

As for the name Barras Bridge, it derives from a small bridge that spanned the long-gone, beautiful, tree-lined Pandon Dene.

The dene ran from north to south, passing where the civic centre is today, with Pandon Burn – at its broadest part 42 metres wide – finally flowing into Tyne.

Much of the dene was still there well into the 19th century, and some of it survived into the 20th century.

In 2017, ChronicleLive reported work had begun on a £10m road revamp - the biggest in the the area since the 1970s - taking in Barras Bridge and St Mary’s Place, as well as Percy Street, Great North Road, Claremont Road and Queen Victoria Road.

Don't miss our new Memory Lane local history website that's packed with archive photographs and has an easy-to-use picture colourisation tool.

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