Spirit level

LEON Gingell had heard the stories before he bought the Cooperage on Newcastle's Quayside in July last year. The building dates back to the 14th Century, the thick wooden beams in the main bar are more than 600 years old. The top floor, which hasn't been opened up for centuries, looks, according to Leon, like a Viking ship that's been turned upside down.

"I was pretty scared at first," he admits. "I have a wine rep who won't even go upstairs. But I have an open mind about these things.

"I have a couple of stories I've heard about the place, but we'll wait until Gavin's been before I say anything."

Gavin Cromwell is a psychic medium. He has carried out readings for various celebrities, including David Guest and the band Girls Aloud, has appeared on Living TV's Most Haunted and is due to starting filming his own series for Living.

He's going to have a look around the Cooperage to see if he feels anything, which we'll then compare to what The Northern Echo's historian David Simpson and Leon know. And Gavin is hard to miss as he walks into the pub - there aren't many people who wear cravats around these parts.

Gavin, 26, is slim, with a peroxide fringe which sweeps over piercing blue eyes. He stands in the doorway for a second looking pensive, cravat tucked into a grey waistcoat.

"Are you picking anything up?" asks his manager Martin Clowes.

"There's loads actually," he replies, in a soft southern Welsh accent.

We head upstairs to a lounge area where it's not long before Gavin feels the presence of others.

'It looks to me like a kind of court room scene," he says. "There's a short, fat woman. I feel like she's been a witness to something and she's got the final say on an execution. She's local, from Newcastle. She's feeling pressure and a lot of guilt... because I think she lied a bit. I think it's witch related."

Martin says we can ask Gavin questions if we want to, to help him. Gavin, reassuringly, is contemplative and is showing no signs of turning into Madame Arcati from Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. In the main nightclub he feels the woman's presence again.

"She's probably late 30s. She was brought in and they said to her 'you have said the woman performed a curse which led to death. Is this true?' 'Yes', she said. She's in charge of what they keep here in terms of stock."

The spirits are apparently here in abundance. There a man who looks like a "pirate-y captain" with dark skin, and medals attached to his navy and red coat. It's around 1730 and he sounds South African. He's buying something.

There's also a little boy showing him something that has been inserted into a wall. "He's come with a really bad smell. I think it's the late 1500s," says Gavin.

He also mentions press gangs. How there's a group of men being held in the pub, the majority of them against their will, before being shipped off. He can smell smoke too, someone died in a fire.

Finally there's the man looking at his own body laid out on a slab.

"How did he die?" asks Martin.

"I think it was consumption," replies Gavin, patting his chest. "His second name is Jenkin. He may be Scottish."

Gavin gets the name Jenkin again as he rubs his hand over the huge oak front door to the Cooperage. Downstairs, Jenkin tells him that royalty has stayed at the Cooperage, in the early 1800s, and that the place is known for a famous witch who was tried there.

"There's one who works behind the bar," quips Leon.

"The person is being led out and being pelted with rocks. She's a witch," says Gavin, before adding: "I've been to hundreds of locations but this one is quite weird. I feel they're vile people. There's a lot of decisions on whether people should die or not."

Born in Newport, Wales, Gavin has seen spirits since he was four years old when he spotted the ghost of a small boy dressed in a blue trouser suit with a blond bob at a manor house in South Wales.

He has since built up his reputation as a psychic medium, doing readings for people and paranormal investigations.

"I'm very real with it. If it's not there, it's not there," he says, adding that he once angered the owner of a pub billed the most haunted by telling him there were no ghosts.

Sometimes he and Martin provoke the ghosts a bit, to get a reaction. "We've had hymn books shooting down the aisle of a church, balloons being popped, a cellar door slamming shut," says Gavin. "The best times to do it are overnight."

At that, Leon comes over with a red woollen bag. "I found it last year, stuffed into the wall at the back," he says. "I keep it on the back here, left of the Pringles. It was left by a Peruvian DJ apparently."

Gavin opens it up gingerly. "It's protection. Little effigies of body parts," he says, wrapping it up quickly. "It's not harmful, but I would put it back."

Outside, we discuss his findings. The Cooperage didn't become a pub until 1974. From 1860 to 1974, the cooperage (barrel-making) business was carried out by the Arthur family.

"It first became a barrel makers in 1730 and it was a merchant's house before then," says Leon. "When he's talking about the big South African guy purchasing stuff, it could have been barrels for the ships. There was also a boy who apparently kept going on the ships to nick stuff and he was hung from the building as a warning to others."

Could the protection the boy was talking to Gavin about be connected with the pouch found behind the bar? "Yes, it's possible," says Leon.

David Simpson adds that press gangs were a common feature of Newcastle's Quayside, particularly in the 1700s when Britain was often at war with France, Spain and Holland, but that the activity has been carried out as far back as the 1300s.

"Basically strong looking men were sought when the ship reached shore and the men were forced aboard ships for naval service against their will," says David. "Sometimes areas of the town were cordoned off by troops."

One of the press gang captains was known as Captain Bover, and he was head of the impressments service at Newcastle in the 1700s. He is thought to have been of French extraction and it is not known whether he was dark skinned.

There were also witch trials in Newcastle in the mid-17th Century, led by a Scottish witch finder called Cuthbert Nicholson, who would push a pin under suspected witches' clothing to pierce their skin. If they did not bleed they were declared witches. But the town hall was used for these trials, in the Quayside area, not the Cooperage.

"The Newcastle bellman invited people to report suspected witches," says David. "Nicholson was later executed in Scotland for trickery. He confessed responsibility for the deaths of 220 women. He had been paid 20 shillings for each witch captured."

Afterwards, Gavin says he would like to come back for a nocturnal visit. "I think he was great," says Leon. "I'm looking forward to him coming back."

And no doubt the various residents of the Cooperage are, too.