The people of Newcastle were either freakishly tall a couple of centuries ago, or this entrance served some other purpose. It faces south and was probably intended to illuminate the steep set of stairs behind it, but it does a poor job of this.
The entrance and the stairs were the work of Amor Spoor in 1841, a builder who lived on nearby Hanover Square. Richard Grainger was creating a new town centre at the time, while other developers were busy on the fringes making smaller but still significant changes to the streetscape. Spoor’s contribution was a vast wall of warehouses along the west end of the Close, as well as creating Hanover Street, which ran behind them.
Spoor’s first big project was in 1838 when Newcastle Corporation gave him the contract to build the New Corn Exchange in the Cloth Market, which stood on the site later occupied by the old Town Hall. In July of 1839, they accepted his plan to build warehousing at the west end of the Close, and to create Hanover Street behind them, so that goods could be transported quickly and easily to the upper town.
The Corporation gave Spoor £1,200 to buy up properties that stood in the way of the new street, but it came with a condition. He must build a set of stairs from Hanover Street down to the Close, “for the use of the public, so far as his property extends”. These would replace the nearby Breakneck Stairs, which people had hurtled down since mediaeval times.
He built three adjacent warehouse complexes, known as Bond No. 60, Bond No. 50 and Bond No. 40, which towered above the Close and backed onto the higher elevation of Hanover Street, where the entrance to the stairs is of a normal height. The warehouses were advertised in the local press for sale or to let in April of 1841, and he looked set to reap the rewards of his investment.
Unfortunately, the following year got off to a bad start for Amor Spoor. In January of 1842, he was found guilty of assaulting a tenant of his warehouses, having cracked his head open with a stick in a Shieldfield pub; he was fined 50 shillings. That same month, Spoor was declared bankrupt. But this was a mere blip: his bankruptcy was annulled a few months later and the money began rolling in from his warehouses.
His new properties were bonded warehouses, where imported wines and spirits were stored until the necessary duties were paid. They also contained combustible goods such as hemp, and the first of several fires broke out in November 1849, when two of his warehouses were completely gutted and lost their roofs. They were eventually repaired but Amor Spoor didn’t live to see this, as he died two months later.
Only Bond No. 40 remains today, the rest of Amor Spoor’s warehouses were destroyed in a fire in 1997. They were replaced with apartment blocks, and the surviving warehouse is inhabited too. Hanover Stairs have been gated at the top and bottom for several years, to keep the public safe. They are very steep and dingy, and worthy successors to Breakneck Stairs.