The history behind Bishop Auckland's new Kingsway Quarter

“Grand buildings have taken the place of antiquated and inadequate premises and the town is now visited with lively interest by the toiling thousands who live and about the thriving and populous district. Trade is carried on in the town on a scale of magnitude which few would be inclined to believe…”

Today, Newgate Street has none of the buzz of its late Victorian heyday – although many of its grand buildings remain but they are boarded up and derelict.

Looking from Kingsway across the derelict area of the new "Kingsway Quarter" to Newgate Street

However, that is about to change as two buildings on the street are to be demolished to create a public park providing access to a new car park on the derelict land behind. This means that the grand buildings around the car park are once again going to have their grandeur restored.

READ THE FULL STORY ABOUT WHAT IS PLANNED FOR NEWGATE STREET

And this is what it should look like...

There will be restaurants and bars on the ground floors while the upper floors will become tourist accommodation.

Here are the stories of the buildings of what is now being called “the Kingsway Quarter”.

Cleminson’s colossal cabinet and furniture emporium

An advert from the North Star newspaper from 1901 for Cleminson's furniture emporium in Victoria House

“IT would be difficult to meet in most towns in the north with finer buildings than those which flank the entrance to Victoria Street, with Mr Archibald Ramsden’s magnificent piano saloon on one side and Mr Michael Cleminson’s colossal cabinet and furniture emporium on the other side, known as Victoria House,” said the Echo in 1891.

Victoria Street, or Avenue as it later became, is the north side of the new Kingsway Quarter, and work on Mr Cleminson’s emporium has already begun.

A Google StreetView of Cleminson's Victoria House in 2015 - it is now shrouded in scaffolding as work has already started converting it into a smokehouse restaurant and craft brewery

Although the Echo 1891 article is full of outrageous exaggeration, it is true that the emporium provides a fine starting point to the area.

The properties of Newgate Street grew from medieval times as low houses with gardens behind. Over the years, the front rooms were converted into shops with a hotch-potch of workshops and storerooms behind.

In the 1870s, Bishop was something of a boomtown, the capital of the coalfield, and many merchants upgraded their properties, replacing the low buildings with three storey affairs, often with their living quarters over their shop.

READ MORE: BREAKING INTO THE BISHOP'S ICEHOUSE

Mr Cleminson was one of those merchants, although he devoted all three floors of his new Victoria House to his furniture.

“The drawing, dining and bedrooms suites, drawing room, cheffoniers and whatnots, mantels, sideboards in mahogany, oak and walnut – these alone comprise an exhibition, to say nothing of no fewer than 28 bedroom suites, 100 iron bedsteads, 50 wringing machines, a countless variety of drawers, toilet tables, sofas and couches, druggetting and carpets, perambulators, fancy room tables (now much in vogue), coal vases, dinner waggons, bookcases, Atlas trays, rocking chairs and horses, chairs in fact of every quality and shape, beds and bolsters, fenders, cornice poles, trunks, rugs, mats, linoleums, oilcloth, coffee pots, ashpans, billiard tables and bicycles…” said the Echo, going on and on about all the wondrous items you could get there.

We think Mr Cleminson’s father, Isiah, had founded the business, which employed 40 men and many horses in the rear workshops, making, polishing and embroidering furniture. It also had a branch in Darlington’s Northgate.

Michael Cleminson died in 1900, and the business continued until 1923 when Victoria House became a branch of Burton’s the tailors. Sir Montague Taylor had started making suits in Chesterfield in 1903, and by the time he opened in Bishop, he had 200 stores across the country.

Victoria House continued as a Burton’s, with Dorothy Perkins in there as well, until 2009.

Work has already begun converting it into a craft brewery and smokehouse restaurant downstairs with tourist accommodation upstairs.

Mechanics Institute

THE first mechanics institute in Bishop – a self-education organisation for working class men – started in 1828, providing lectures, classes and exhibitions as well as a library and a fossil museum for its members.

However, by the 1870s, it was at a low ebb. At its 1879 annual meeting, the treasurer was pelted with cinders as he spoke and a portrait of a former vice-president was turned upside down on the wall.

A new start was needed, and so land in Victoria Street was bought from Mr Cleminson, and local architect Robert Wilkinson Thompson was commissioned to create a Gothic headquarters.

(In 1873, Mr Thompson had designed the grand co-op on Newgate Street, opposite the Kingsway Quarter, which had really kickstarted the retail boom. He also designed the Lightfoot Institute on Kingsway which is currently being restored.)

It cost £1,088 14s 14d.

As the date carved in stone over the doorway says, it opened in 1880, and its three storeys featured a library, a newsroom and a billiards room, plus an apartment for its librarian/caretaker. Matthew Richley, the legendary local historian, occupied that role for a decade and lived there with his family.

Matthew Richley, the famous Bishop Auckland historian who was librarian/caretaker at the Mechanics Institute

At the start of the 20th Century, mechanics institutes began to fade as state education removed their starting point. Gradually they evolved into men’s social clubs with emphasis on billiards and snooker. Bishop’s institute ceased to function in the 1960s, and the building has been empty since the 1980s, excluding the firestarters who did much damage to the upper floor in 2015.

Temperance, or Masonic, Hall

Police at the Masonic Hall in 2021 when a cannabis farm was found there

ON the corner of Victoria Avenue and Kingsway is what has latterly been known as the masonic hall, although it started life in 1877 as a Temperance Hall.

On its first floor was a large assembly hall, while on the ground floor was the Band of Hope room which featured a stage over which the Darlington & Richmond Herald newspaper said there was “an epeletic arch, beautifully enriched and decorated in plaster work”. We have no idea what an “epeletic arch” was but it was doubtlessly very impressive.

The hall cost £3,000 to build, was designed by James Garry of West Hartlepool, and, under Joseph Lingford, the president of the Temperance Society, it opened on January 17, 1877, to great non-alcoholic celebrations.

“The building is a great ornament to the town, and in honour of the opening, most of the principal tradesmen in the town closed their shops and thus had themselves, and gave their assistants, an opportunity of taking part,” said the Herald. “A sumptuous tea was provided in the large room on the ground floor.”

The two lodges of masons left the hall in 2015, but it hasn’t been empty since – in February 2021, police discovered more than 1,000 cannabis plants growing upstairs.

For much of its life, the hall was joined to the Mechanics Institute next door, and the two are now destined to become tourist accommodation.

An architectural detail from the Temperance, or Masonic, Hall on Victoria Avenue

Robinson’s shoe shop

Old views of the buildings that make up the Kingsway Quarter are difficult to find because photographers usually focussed on the grand co-op building directly opposite. This, though, is from the Echo archive in September 1966 with Robinson's shoe shop on the right with the low building immediately beside which are to be demolished

NUMBERS 63 to 67 Newgate Street are due to be demolished to make the public park to access the car park on the derelict land behind. They were last occupied by Priceless shoes, following a pattern of use going back more than 150 years.

No 63 is a low modern building with no historical interest, and Nos 65 & 67 have what Historic England describes as “moderate to low interest”.

Nos 65 & 67 form a three storey property that was probably built in 1890 for boot and shoemaker Frederick Robinson. He and his family may well have lived in the upper floors where the original fireplaces and windows remain, although the ground floor is gutted and derelict.

Robinson's shoe emporium in 1890 in Newgate Street

His empire spread into the properties on either side of him and into outhouses to the rear where a score of cobblers were at work.

Frederick passed the business to his son, Ellis, who passed it to his son, George – they literally followed in each other’s footsteps.

Retiring in 2005: Robinson's shop manager Dennis Franklin, Noreen Robinson and George Robinson

George retired in 2005 at the age of 69, when it was also the last day of assistant Dennis Franklin, 80, who had started work in 1939.

Priceless shoes took over the shop but it has been empty since 2020.

An 1890s advert for Fred Robinson's shoe emporium

No 69 and The Three Bluebells

From the left: a modern low building and Robinson's shoe shop, which are to be demolished to create the park, and then No 69, which may be found to have ancient beginnings, which is to be amalgamated with the mock-Tudor pub, the Three Bluebells, to create a restaurant

NO 69, which until fairly recently has been Clark’s shoe shop, is deeply intriguing because some people feel its low shape indicates that it has 16th Century beginnings, although Memories understands it has so far disappointed the experts who have looked at it.

It is going to become part of a new restaurant which will occupy the old mock-Tudor pub, the Three Bluebells, beside it. The Bluebells has been on this spot for ages, although this building was put up in the early years of the 20th Century.

The pub was also known as the Thistle and most recently has been a womenswear shop called Babez. Pigeons have made its alleyway slippery and disgusting, so renovation cannot come soon enough.

READ MORE: THE STORY OF CLAIRMONT, A DERELICT BISHOP AUCKLAND BUILDING

•  If you have any tales to tell about any of the Newgate Street buildings, please let us know: email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk. We’ll have to return to Mr Archibald Ramsden’s “magnificent piano saloon”, which is just outside the Kingsway Quarter, next week.

An Edwardian postcard of Newgate Street, focussing on the co-op on the left. Robinson's shoe shop is the second three storey building on the right hand side in the distance