The 3 Bulls Heads stood on the corner of Sandgate and the Milk Market; the pub and everything else in the photo are long gone. The age of the building and the date of the photo are unknown, but we can take an educated guess at both.
The range of buildings on the east side of the Milk Market, including this one, was still known as “The Folly” when the photo was taken, after a misguided attempt by Cuthbert Dikes to supply the lower part of the town with water. He began to build an engine to pump water from the river in 1681, but ownership of the land was disputed and he was sued. Nevertheless, he continued with his project – his ‘folly’ – which never pumped a drop of water but cost him £2,000 in legal fees.
The building probably dated from then, as it couldn’t have been much older. Most of the original buildings in Sandgate were burned to the ground by the defenders of Newcastle during the Siege of 1644, to stop them being used as cover by the attacking Scots. The Town Wall was directly opposite this building, and anything on that spot would have been unlikely to survive the siege.
The date the photo was taken can be established to within a handful of years, thanks to the sign on the front of the building. It says “3 Bulls Heads. J. Spires, late of London. Sailors’ Boarding House Keeper.” John Spires and his wife Amelia ran their boarding house from around 1885 until his death in 1890, and she sold second-hand clothes there for a couple of years after that.
The building had previously been a pub, one of many in Sandgate that served the thousands of keelmen who lived in the neighbourhood. It was thirsty work rowing tons of coal downriver in their keel boats, and part of their payment was known as a ‘can’: an allowance of ale equal in value to two shillings and sixpence. The 3 Bulls Heads was known as a ‘can house’ in the early 19th century, where this allowance could be drunk.
It was owned by Newcastle Corporation who leased it to the Heron family; they ran the pub for a couple of decades until 1881, when Lois Heron’s licence was taken away after the death of her husband. This was convenient for the Corporation, who wanted to pull the building down and replace it with a huge lodging house on the corner of Sandgate and the Milk Market, which was sorely needed in the area.
John and Amelia Spires were allowed to continue providing accommodation in the building until the Corporation decided how to proceed with their plans, but they built their lodging house elsewhere. The 3 Bulls Heads was eventually demolished in 1893, and nowadays there’s no trace of it, or indeed of Sandgate and the old Milk Market.