150 years since Newcastle/Gateshead great fire
Date: 2004-10-06, Publication: The Journal
It was 150 years ago today that disaster rocked Newcastle and Gateshead. Tony Henderson reports.
Today Newcastle Quayside, regenerated by a series of multi-million pound projects, is a leisure and business boom area.
But the Quayside story could have been very different had not disaster struck 150 years ago to the day.
What has come to be known as the Great Fire of 1854 killed 53 people and wiped out a swathe of buildings which today would have been a listed, historic riverfront with enormous tourism pulling power similar to the Bessie Surtees-Cooperage stretch.
"There was a terrible loss of life and buildings, many of which would have dated from the 17th Century," said Ian Ayris, author of a book on Newcastle's riverfront.
So great was the explosion which preceded the Newcastle blaze that it was heard as far away as Hartlepool and people in North and South Shields thought it was an earthquake.
Among the victims was Alexander Dobson, the son of eminent Newcastle architect John Dobson.
What was described at the time as a "most terrible and appalling catastrophe" began in the early hours of October 6 when fire broke out in a worsted manufactory on the Gateshead side of the riverfront.
The building was packed with wool and a quantity of oil which produced a fierce blaze.
Next door was a 100-yard long warehouse containing 130 tons of nitrate of soda, 3,000 tons of brimstone, 170 tons of manganese and one-and-a-half tons of naptha. It was a timebomb.
As the warehouse caught fire vivid blue flames soared skywards as firemen and soldiers of the 26th Regiment fought the inferno.
By this time Newcastle Quayside was packed with spectators, who no doubt felt perfectly safe with the Tyne between them and the spectacle on the opposite bank.
In addition the Newcastle side was an area of densely packed and heavily populated alleys, chares and tenements, whose occupants spilled out to watch the event.
Then came the giant explosion, which sent fireballs of sulphur, brimstone, stones and metal across the river.
"Articles of every description were thrown up with the force of a volcanic eruption, only to fall with corresponding momentum upon the dense masses of the people assembled and upon the surrounding habitations," according to a contemporary report.
"The crowd upon the Quayside and Sandhill was mown down as if by a discharge of artillery, many being rendered insensible by the shock, others temporarily suffocated by the vapour, and many more wounded by flying debris. An appalling wail of distress arose in all directions."
The fire in Gateshead had spread to a vinegar works, timber yard, a flour mill, and homes. On the Newcastle side the flames took hold in houses, a stationer's and draper's and the Dun Cow pub whose stock of spirits further fuelled the flames.
It spread rapidly to the Grey Horse Inn, the Sun Inn, and tenement buildings.
Newcastle issued a plea for help and fire engines arrived from Sunderland, Hexham, Durham, Morpeth and Berwick.
A number of the bodies could only be identified by objects such as keys, cigar cases and snuff boxes.
In Newcastle sail makers' premises, ship chandlers, furniture workshops, the Golden Anchor pub and many small shops were destroyed.
At a later hearing into the disaster, a Professor Taylor said that burning sulphur would have ignited the nitrate of soda, releasing 500,000 cubic feet of gas which, unable to escape, had exploded.
Although, in addition to the death toll and the loss of what could have been a hugely attractive historic waterfront, many more future lives may have been saved.
This, says Ian, is because the conflagration wiped out the crowded, fever-ridden and insanitary areas behind Newcastle Quayside.
Many of the dead from three cholera outbreaks from the 1830s to 50s had come from the Quayside.
"If the disaster had not happened we would have been left with more post-medieval buildings, but it did give Newcastle the opportunity to develop its Victorian Quayside," said Ian.
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