The Wellington Grill Room is pictured here in 1898, at the west end of Collingwood Street. Grill rooms were hugely popular in Newcastle at the time, but this one was demolished shortly after the photo was taken.
Grill rooms first appeared in London where they were usually in hotels or large pubs, and began spreading to other cities in the 1870s. They served grilled steaks, chops and sausages, accompanied by potatoes or chips. It was simple food cooked over an open flame, often in view of the diners, and washed down with pints of beer.
Their clientele were mostly male industrial and office workers who wanted a hot, filling meal in a setting that was less formal than a restaurant. The rooms were often smoky, bustling and noisy with conversation; not places for lingering, but for fueling up before heading back to work.
Farquhar Laing introduced the first one to Newcastle when the Pine Apple Grill opened above his pub on the corner of Nun Street and Grainger Street in 1883. Other pubs and hotels quickly latched onto the idea and opened grill rooms of their own, but Laing kept one step ahead of them. He built the Eldon Grill in 1893 at the head of Grey Street, one of the largest and finest in the North East of England.
The Wellington Grill Room opened above the Wellington Hotel in 1886 and the location was perfect. Collingwood Street was the business and commercial heart of Newcastle and the Wellington was also in sight of the Central Station. The newspaper lad in the photo would have worked for the Evening Chronicle, whose offices and printing presses were a few yards away, employing hundreds of men.
The Wellington Hotel had opened in 1852 when the Cumberland Arms was converted into a boarding house aimed at catering for commercial travellers arriving at the newly completed Central Station. It continued to trade as a pub too, and a billiard hall was added on the floor beneath the grill room. This successful combination was put up for sale in October 1896, along with several neighbouring buildings.
They were bought by William John Sanderson, whose father John Sanderson owned the Newcastle Brewery, and between them they had a large portfolio of pubs and hotels. William intended to build a grand hotel on the site to pick up trade from the recently demolished Royal Turf Hotel on the opposite side of Collingwood Street. The Wellington Hotel’s drinks licence was extended to cover the new project.
But his father died that same year and the brewery was quickly sold, so William had a change of plan. He built a huge office complex instead called Collingwood Buildings, it was completed in 1903 and Barclays Bank occupied the corner site for nearly a century. The bank closed in 1991 and their premises are now the home of the Revolution Vodka Bar, on the exact same spot as the Wellington Hotel in the photo.