Two women are pictured walking up the Side, the steeple of St Nicholas’ Cathedral is in the distance. The photographer is unknown and it’s undated, but there are clues that tell us when it was taken.
There’s a gap in the buildings below the steeple which was created on the evening of March 9th 1900 when a fire broke out in the warehouse of the paper merchants Robinson & Co. It quickly engulfed their neighbours and led to the last big loss of ancient buildings in Newcastle; some of them, like Robinson’s, were built when Elizabeth I was on the throne.
The unluckiest pub in Newcastle was among them, this was the third time the Burnt House had burned down. The surviving buildings in the photo were demolished over the following months to make way for Milburn House. This occupies the entire area between the Side, Dean Street and St Nicholas Street and was reputedly the biggest office block in the country when it was completed in 1905.
Contemporary newspaper reports all say the fire broke out on “the Side”, but a Council street sign appeared on Milburn House shortly after it was built that calls it simply “Side”. This sparked a debate still raging among pedants today over whether or not there should be a “the” in front of the street’s name. Both are acceptable, neither is wrong.
However, all Newcastle’s principal historians called it “the Side”: William Gray did so in 1649, Henry Bourne in 1736, John Brand in 1789, Eneas McKenzie in 1827, and R.J. Charleton in 1885. This is how it appeared on most maps of Newcastle before the 20th century. Almost everyone today still uses “the” in front of “Side” in general speech, as they do with “the Bigg Market”, which never has never had “the” in its official title.
Getting back to the date of the photo, the footpath in front of the gap between the buildings has been fenced off, probably because the site was still dangerous. This suggests the photo was taken soon after the fire and before the other buildings were also fenced off when their demolition began, so maybe April or May.
The abundance of litter on the street is another important detail. It tells us the two women and the people in front of them were coming away from the Quayside market, on a Sunday morning in the Spring of 1900.