The old photo shows the Head of the Side in the 1920s with The Empress Inn on the left, the colour photo shows the same scene today for comparison. The pub has a complicated history that takes some effort to untangle.
Many historians claim it stands on the site of Admiral Lord Collingwood’s birthplace, hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. He was indeed born in a building that became a pub, but that was the Meters Arms next door to The Empress. It was demolished in 1900 when Milburn House was built, the site is marked with a bust of Collingwood above one of its entrances.
The Empress stands on the site of a building that commemorated another national hero, albeit a Scottish one. A timber-framed house had been there since Elizabethan times and in the 1830s it became known as the Burns Tavern. There were three pubs in Newcastle named after Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns, but they were snubbed by the town’s Burns Society, who held their meetings and Burns Night celebrations at the 3 Indian Kings on the Quayside.
The Burns Tavern was demolished in 1881 and replaced with a large office block called St Nicholas Chambers. The architect was John Johnstone, who had also designed the nearby Town Hall. Maybe he thought he was adding a touch of culture to his creation by including a new pub called the Burns Tavern on the ground floor.
But there was nothing cultured at all about this Burns Tavern, it was frequented by thieves and its owners were criminals too. It lost its licence in 1888 when the landlord, William Ray, was charged with drugging the drinks of some female customers. He and three other men sexually assaulted the women, and Ray was fined five pounds for the offences at Newcastle Police Court.
It was rebranded as The Empress the following year and run for over two decades by John Longstaff, a former champion cyclist. Jack Mitchell became the landlord in 1924 after moving there from a pub on Blackett Street, and ran it until his death in 1928. You can see his name on the front of the building in the first photo.
The current owners of The Empress decided to reintroduce some culture to their premises, and have converted it into a Country & Western bar.