This pub on Shakespeare Street was opened almost two centuries ago by a circus clown, who named it after a horse-riding muscleman. It’s had a couple of names since then, and is currently called Lady Grey’s.
Shakespeare Street was built by Richard Grainger during his redevelopment of Newcastle’s town centre, and this is one of a dozen or so pubs that were included in his scheme. He had recently finished building his new Theatre Royal, occupying the whole north side of the street, when William Atkins leased the pub from him in October 1838.
It stands directly opposite the theatre’s stage door, which would have appealed to Atkins, who was no stranger to performing in front of an audience. He had previously worked as a clown for Andrew Ducrow, a skilled horseman known as the “Colossus of Equestrians”, who was one of the most famous entertainers of his day and owned a circus that made several visits to Newcastle.
Ducrow’s acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers, and clowns such as William Atkins, were mere sideshows, the crowds came to see the main man. He’d enter the ring with his sons, all dressed in flesh-coloured body stockings, and they’d mount a pair of white stallions. They’d stand on the horses’ backs while striking poses and flexing their muscles for the audience’s titillation, their body stockings making them seem buck naked.
Atkins called his new pub the Ducrow Inn, which would have flattered his former boss when he brought his circus to the Theatre Royal in November 1839. He ran the pub until his death in 1857, and it was put up for sale the following year. The advert in the local press gives us a good description of it.
The pub was much bigger than it is now, extending all the way back to High Bridge where it had a frontage known as the Back Bar. There were stables for customers to park their horses, a brewhouse, and refreshment rooms “fitted up and finished in a Style of Elegance and Comfort”. The pub changed hands several times over the following decades, and in the summer of 1894 it was reduced substantially in size.
The rear of the Ducrow was demolished to accommodate the Central Masonic Hall, which was built on Pilgrim Street but extended a fair way along High Bridge. It is currently occupied by a nightspot called Pilgrim. The Newcastle upon Tyne Lodge of Masons – the oldest lodge outside of London – held the first meeting at the Masonic Hall towards the end of 1895.
The Ducrow changed its name to The Adelphi the following year, which would seem appropriate for a pub on Shakespeare Street, as it’s also the name of a famous theatre in London. But this wasn’t the reason it was chosen: the word ‘adelphi’ has great significance among Freemasons, being Greek for “brothers”.
This name would see the pub through to the 21st century, when it was remodelled and relaunched as Lady Grey’s in 2011.