Newcastle in the 1990s: 10 photos of favourite pubs, shops, restaurants and more from 30 years ago

We step albeit briefly back to the 1990s - the decade that brought us the sounds of Britpop, the concept of Cool Britannia and, closer to home, Kevin Keegan’s ‘Entertainers’, the finest Newcastle United team in living memory whose high-octane brand of football came within a whisker of delivering the first league title to St James’ Park since 1927.

Our 10 striking images are published courtesy of Newcastle Libraries and were captured by the photographer Malcolm Maybury. They recall one-time popular locations around Newcastle that over the last three decades have been subject to change. We see former pubs, cinemas, restaurants and stores that have since been demolished, transformed or given new identities.

Take our main image showing High Bridge in 1995. Three decades earlier, in the 1960s, it had been dubbed 'Newcastle's answer to London's Carnaby Street' by the local press.

Running east to west from Pilgrim Street to the Bigg Market and bisected by Grey Street, the lane in recent times has played host to an ever-changing array of boutiques, tattoo parlours, micro pubs and cafes.

As seen in the photograph, the trendy Phaze clothing store (where I bought a cool, stylised Malcolm Macdonald T-shirt at the time), is today no more. Neither is the 1995 incarnation of the Bacchus pub. The second of three separate establishments in the city to bear that name, it traded between 1971 and 2001 - before being demolished and rebuilt as the pub we know today higher up the lane towards Pilgrim Street.

The original Bacchus, meanwhile, had stood on Newgate Street from around 1822 until 1971, a time when a vast swathe of old buildings were demolished to make way for the new Eldon Square shopping centre, radically altering the character of the city centre.

In other photos we see more Newcastle pubs many of us frequented in the mid 1990s that have since closed or, in some instances, been demolished. On Pudding Chare, the Printer’s Pie - part of Thomson House, the now-deserted former offices of the Chronicle, Journal and Sunday Sun, and a one-time favourite post-work drinking hole for thirsty journalists - served its last pint years ago.

Other former pubs include the now-closed Market Lane (often referred to as the ‘Monkey Bar’) on Pilgrim Street; the Cooperage on The Close, which traded between 1974 and 2009 in a venerable building dating from the 15th century; the now-demolished Egypt Cottage on City Road, right next door to the old Tyne Tees television studios; and the Farmer’s Rest in the Haymarket, torn down to make way for the expanding Marks & Spencer store and the revamped bus station.

Heading over to the top end of Grey Street, many of us might have bought books in the Waterstones branch which in 1995 was operating in the fine building that had been occupied for more than 100 years by Mawson, Swan and Morgan, purveyors of stationery and art materials. Today you’ll find a fashion store called End there.

Just around the corner, if Pilgrim Street in 2023 is undergoing a long-overdue transformation, three decades ago the Odeon cinema, where Geordie film-lovers had flocked in their countless thousands since the early 1930s, was still a reassuring landmark. The grand old picture hall closed in 2002, and was finally demolished in 2017.

Another cinema, which stood in the Manors area of the city, but traded for a mere 15 years between 1989 and 2004 before being bulldozed, was Warner Bros. We see Chiquito’s Mexican restaurant which stood as part of the same complex and was popular with pre and post-movie diners.

Finally from 1995, we see Newcastle Playhouse, a thriving centre for the region’s dramatic arts, and with a foyer bar that hosted top bands from the thriving local music scene. Today the building is home to Northern Stage. Much has changed in Newcastle over the last three decades.

Enjoy our 10 photographs from the mid 1990s as captured by Malcolm Maybury.