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Newcastle, Tyne & Wear

Tyne Theatre & Opera House

Last Updated:

12 Jul 2024

Newcastle, Tyne & Wear

This is a

Theatre, Cinema

54.970406, -1.620941

Founded in 

1867

Current status is

Extant

Designer (if known):

WB Parnell

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Grade I Listed

This Italianate building, previously also a cinema, was built in 1867 by WB Parnell. He was prolific northern architect who also built the St Nicholas Buildings and Phoenix House on the Quayside. It was funded by the Cowen family, who owned the brickworks at Blaydon with Joseph being the MP for Newcastle also.

Given Cowen's radical leanings, the theatre staged performances suiting his principles. He was a staunch supporter of Irish nationalism, so the first play here was Arrah-Na-Pogue, set during the Irish rebellion 1798. The theatre only grew in later years with improvements in the railways, allowing shows from the south to tour here. Boarding houses popped up around Newcastle to house them, and became a decent industry thanks to the theatre boom.

Changing tastes and technological advancements resulted in this place turning into a cinema. After a dormant period after the First World War Sir Oswald Stoll, a national theatre mogul, leased the Theatre and stuck his name on from 1919. It became the first cinema in the city to show films with sound.

It continued operating up til 1974, a victim of the harsh economic climate. As we know these days, leisure things like this are the first thing to nip in the bud when you're skint. Despite attempts to market smutty 70s erotica at the end, its reckoning was realised. It only reopened through the registered charity that still operates this beautiful site today.

Much of the original stage machinery is still in situ for the grand shows of the mid-Victorian era, recreating galloping Arabian horses for American dramas in the 1890s as well as waterfalls for traditional pantomimes. Even trains were put on from Darlington and Consett to watch Red Riding Hood in 1870. It's an absolute marvel, and if anyone has the opportunity to come watch a show here, you're putting it towards one of the city's gems.

Listing Description (if available)

(Formerly listed as The New Tyne Theatre, WESTGATE ROAD, previously listed as the Stoll Picture Theatre) 31.5.74 GV I Theatre and opera house, later cinema; now theatre. 1867 by W.B. Parnell for Cowan. Bought by Oswald Stoll and opened as cinema in 1919. Italianate front of three storeys, five bays (the outer bays narrower) in pale brick with stone dressings. Stone cornice with long brackets, tall parapet and pediment over; small semi-circular pediments, flanked by urns, at sides. Arcaded second floor. Ground floor modernised. Lozenge or pointed first floor window. Painted advertisement on left return gable: THE/STOLL/TYNESIDE'S/TALKIE/THEATRE. Interior; Horse-shoe shaped auditorium with three tiers of balconies on cast iron columns with floral capitals and long cantilever brackets. Balconies S-curved with thick applied baroque decoration. One set of boxes at either side framed in Orders below and by two large female terms at top stage. Shell-shaped ceiling and very high proscenium arch. An exceptionally complete surviving example of early stage machinery. Deep stage with five sets of tabs, machinery and control panel. Complete switchboard for earliest electric lighting. Very deep and high back:stage, dressing and ancillary rooms with many period features. Source: Mackintosh and Sell eds. Curtains!!! 1982.

Both of these Ordnance Surveys show the Tyne Theatre on Westgate Road between the 1890s and 1910s. The plan of 1896 shows a deep lvel of detail of the area, with the Tyne Theatre adjoining an old burial ground on Peel Lane and surrounding by multiple public houses. This was the era when the 'old' Westgate Road was finally cleared. Up to around the 1880s, there were still possibly 17th century buildings in place when the West Gate was still here, but given the road was a main cultural thoroughfare these were all replaced by contemporary terraces, public houses and hotels.

You'll see on the map from the 1910s that another cinema - the Pavilion - had opened in 1903. The tramway had also expanded and remodelled. The tram no longer enveloped the buildings between Cross Street and Clayton Street, while lines now served Clayton Street West and the bottom of Westgate Road.

To wind time back a little, it's worth exhibiting the area in the late 1850s when it was first surveyed. This was only a decade before the Tyne Theatre was built. It is of course difficult to ascertain what exactly stood here, but we can see from early shots that there were dwellings and businesses here dating from at least the 18th century but potentially earlier. The land next to Rutherford Street was yet to be developed, and a Fever Hospital still stood in the middle of the city. Next door to this was the Bath Lane Bowling Green, the earliest in the city (https://www.northeastheritagelibrary.co.uk/sports-archive/6438/bath-lane%2C-bowling-green).

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The Tyne Theatre & Opera House in 2024

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The buffet is just in view in this shot from the early 1900s. Source: Newcastle Libraries

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c17th or 18th century terrace adjacent to the Tyne Theatre & Opera House, exhibiting Westgate Road's previous composition as an early modern thoroughfare. Source: Newcastle Libraries

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