oh, oh, I've just remembered





A pint of mixed in "tha clerb" in Northumberland with my fatha-in lor was called "a halfy-half", and not bitter and mild either, "special" and "ordinary".



Told you they were weird up there.

Yes. 'Master Brewer' I think

Prime Land? Big profits for developer? It would have been in 2004. I work for a developer whose main project is a big mixed-use scheme in Central London and getting any funding from the banks is like blood out of the proverbial stone. So any developer for a scheme on this site would have ten times the trouble. I would be very surprised if, even if a developer acquires it fairly soon, they will do anything more than sit on it for the next five years. Any scheme they would do, especially if it was residential-led, would scarcely be viable. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if the big housebuilders have a good sniff around



I lived at Brewery Wharf for six months last year so its a shame to see the brewery finally close as had been mooted for a while - if only for the fact that the building was a local landmark and an unusually centrally located symbol of the region's industrial heritage. However I do have to agree with the majority of posters that Tetleys has been garbage whenever I've had it.



On a related topic, I bloody miss my thursday evenings in Mr Foleys and the Victoria. Good times.

Give us a bell the next time you're up.

Thanks for that.

I have learned something about beer on Southstander.com today ... that is definitely a first.

Reading this thread has brought back some memories for me, on trips to leeds in the early 80's with hull we often used to get to gaping goose well early so we could sink a fair few tetley bitters before game, was only in my late teens at the time and probably youngest on the bus but you certainly had to be quick out the blocks off the bus to beat the old timers to the bar!! Totally agree with comments about carlsberg, !!.

i worked in a good tetley's pub from 83-86 (iirc (still at school)) just as lagers were just arriving, Skol initially, Lowenbrau the XXXX with something of marketing fanfare,

The very last job I ever worked on in Newcastle was in 1984 and the conversion of an old warehouse property on the Quayside into a new pub which would be owned by Tetleys, the job was remarkable for three things,



1. It was the first property on the Quayside to be renovated, at that time the area was a no-go area, full of closed and derelict Victorian warehouses/shipping offices and NOT the sort of place to linger even during the daytime, we thought they were mad to open a pub in the middle of all that.



2. It was the first Tetley's pub that I knew of in the whole of the North East apart from one other in Felling.



3. When they fitted the bars out on each set of pumps was one with a yellow cover one with "XXX" written on and no matter how much you questioned the owners and architects what this was they wouldn't tell you until opening night.



Turned out it was lager.

Will do. Not sure when that will be but the lure of Leeds beers and Bradford Curry is strong.

I hadn't realised that we must have overlapped.

I was in Newcastle in 1984. I used to lodge in Osborne Road, Jesmond and worked at International Paint (Felling) from February to October.





I have some evocative photos somewhere, monochrome prints, that I shot down there.

Tyne Bridge in the background, railway lines along the quayside in the foreground.

Not a soul in sight.

Not far from where the Malmaison is now (my word it has changed down there).

I was into gritty realism photography back then.







MInd you, back then, that was probably considered an improvement.

I only ever found a small number of pubs that sold decent hand-pulled beer in / around Newcastle.

The Bridge, between the Castle and the High Level Bridge.

One up at the top of the bypass in Pelaw (!!).

One in Percy Street near the Haymarket ... name escapes me but they had hand-pulled Exhibition. (most Ex was electric at that time). People warned me off the place because of the biker clientele (i.e. motorcyclists, not folks from Byker ... which might have been a different proposition) but it was not at all Hell's Angels-ish, you just had to look at their hands and it was clear they were all office workers who happened to like bikes.

Plus a couple of pubs at the Gateshead end of Felling that I only hazily recollect (I wonder why?).



Maybe you had more time to explore than I did and could add to the list?

Started off in a hotel on Osborne Rd in '77 and then to a guest house on Fern Rd just around the corner, by '78 I was firmly ensconced in Whitley Bay









My brother was into photography then and we did exactly the same one Saturday afternoon with one of those lenses that needs a shoulder rest to steady it, again not a soul in sight on the Quayside, a huge iron warehouse just in front of where Malmaison is now and the Baltic Mills was still a flour warehouse









I frequented a few street corner pubs when in Jesmond, still very traditional "locals" but it was then that I turned to lager as nothing that the Newcastle breweries had to offer interested me. I was also inducted into the Felling Mafia and dragged into their Tuesday night sessions at The Queen Victoria in Felling, the only Tetleys pub that I knew of on Tyneside, sold electric pumped crap Tetleys bitter that no-one drank





I only ever went into Newcastle centre for the monthly "trade society" meetings we had (sort of like the Masons but not secret and only involving electricians, lots of beer and no daft fund raising) and once when I took an aussie backpacker out who was staying in the guest house, I can't remember a thing about that night at all.

Just following on from that warehouse to pub conversion on the Quayside I've just had a look on Google Earth and its now called Flynns Bar/Diner and looks about ready for a spruce up again, you know you're getting old when projects that you worked on as a fresh faced surveyor are now being refurbished again or in some cases have been demolished





The University of Newcastle Claude Gibb Halls of Residence was the first contract I worked on when I arrived in Newcastle (a new-build), its right at the side of the motorway and the last time I drove past it was derelict

That was the place where some brilliant architect had designed each floor into six roomed self contained units which were let off to all male or all female groups.



Very proper it all was and no mixed units at all, no sir, none of that sort of stuff in The Claude Gibb Hall of Residence. didn't take more than a couple of hours for all the new residents to notice that half of the units had a fire escape door that led from their bathroom to the bathroom of the unit behind, you had a 50% chance of a secret passageway through to the showers of the opposite sex.