This drinking fountain stands on Newgate Street next to St Andrews Church, but it has nothing to do with that building. It’s a remnant of the Gallowgate Baths & Wash Houses and was located at the far left of the old engraving.
The cholera epidemic of 1853 had claimed over a thousand lives in Newcastle and brought into focus the need for fresh and clean drinking water. The owners of a drapery shop on Market Street called Dunn & Co considered it their civic duty to provide the town with four drinking fountains, and Newcastle Corporation matched their offer by funding four more.
The one in the photo was paid for by the Corporation and unveiled in May of 1860 to serve the needs of the neighbourhood, where few houses had an indoor water supply. The residents could fill up a bucket and take water home, and there was a steel cup attached to a chain for passersby to quench their thirst. It was also used by farmers to water their horses and livestock on their way to and from the town’s markets.
The fountain took its water from the Gallowgate Baths & Wash Houses, another initiative to improve the health of the locals, by keeping them clean. The Corporation commissioned one of the town’s leading architects, Thomas Oliver, to design the new building, which stood on the corner of Newgate Street and Gallowgate. The baths opened for business on June 16th 1859, having cost £5,000 to build and equip.
From six in the morning until nine at night, its patrons could take a cold bath for a penny or luxuriate in a lukewarm one for tuppence. There were fourteen “slipper” baths, one vapour bath, and four tepid and cold shower baths. There were also forty-five separate washing stalls for laundering purposes, each with two fixed tubs, a poss tub and scrubbing board. The water was heated by a furnace designed to consume its own smoke, so that clean washing wasn’t immediately blackened with soot.
The baths were relocated further up Gallowgate in 1896, and the building in the engraving was pulled down four years later when the road was widened to accommodate the new electric trams. The drinking fountain ceased to function when its water supply was gone, but it’s one of two that have survived from this era. A fountain donated by Dunn & Co is still in place at Westgate Hill Cemetery and in much better condition, although it no longer dispenses water either.