Newcastle Under Lyme, Staffordshire
Newcastle-under-Lyme is a market town and the administrative centre of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, England. It is adjacent to the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Not to be confused with Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle grew up in the twelfth century around the castle which gave the town its name, and received its first charter in 1173. The town’s early industries included millinery, silk weaving, and coal mining, but despite its proximity to the Potteries, it did not develop a ceramics trade. The photographs below were taken in 2006 on the Iron Market in Newcastle Under Lyme. The photo on the left is taken looking at the Iron Market from the High Street. You can see Burtons on the left which was a clothes store. The building is now a cafe. The photograph on the right is looking at the Iron Market and was taken as I was standing next to the Queens Gardens. You can see the library on the right. The building was demolished at the end of 2022 and student apartments to occupy that space.
There have been many changes to Newcastle Under Lyme over the years. You can see in the photographs below how Brunswick Street has changed on the left looking toward the roundabout. You will notice the Jubilee Swimming Baths and a Car sales place called ISUZU. The Jubilee Baths closed in 2010. The Jubilee Baths has remained empty ever since. In 2010 Newcastle Council proposed to demolish the site to make way for 6 new retail units and an apartment block. Plans were left unfulfilled until 2016 when the site was finally cleared. The owners went into administration but the project has now been taken over by a firm which specialises in turning around failed developments. Integritas Property Group (IPG), the developer managing the scheme, said it would meet an ever-increasing demand for student accommodation in the area. Plans to open it as student accommodation could become a reality, following £11m funding from real estate investors. IPG head Mitchell Walsh said it was committed to seeing the project through. The photograph on the left I took in April 2006 a few years before both builds were demolished and still being used. The image on the right is a screenshot taken from Google Street View of the same road and view as it looks to the present day. You can see the new Jubilee 2 swimming baths on the left by the Kwick Fit sign and the unfinished apartment block further down the road on the left.
The two photographs below were taken in 2008 on a Saturday afternoon in Newcastle Under Lyme town centre when the town was still busy and we had a lot more stalls. Today it is not as busy and you do not see as many stalls in the town on a Saturday due to most of the trade being lost to all the big supermarkets. In the 1980s the town centre was very busy with a lot of shops like Dixon’s, Curry’s and Rumblow’s. There were also shops like Radio Rentals and Granada that rented televisions and video recorders.
The photograph on the left is Newcastle Under Lyme taken sometime in the early 1960s and you can see the Borough Armes Hotel in the background on the right. If you look just past the train station towards the end of the train you can see a bridge for the road called King Street that runs over it. The train station closed in 1965 and was demolished with all the lines ripped up with all the cuttings filled in and nothing exists of the train station anymore. The photograph on the right is taken on King Street from the Borough Armes Hotel looking towards Station Walks. The wall is the remainder of the wall of the bridge seen in the photograph on the left.
