Home  |  Newcastle  |  Tourist Information  |  History of Carliol Square

A History of Carliol Square  

 
Carliol Square holds a prominent position in the vibrant centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, a city which traces its history back to Roman times. The town was a major settlement on Hadrian’s Wall which linked the east coast of England to the west as protection against invasion from the north.  Indeed, Newcastle’s strategic position near the borderlands with Scotland, and the advantages of a navigable river, would always make it vulnerable to attack. Like other important towns, it needed to be heavily fortified and by the end of the thirteenth century construction of an encompassing town wall was underway. Carliol Square stands just within the site of the east wall.  These defences, in places eight feet thick and twelve feet high, protected the town from attack, most notably in 1644 during the English civil war when the Royalist town was able to hold out for some time during the lengthy Siege of Newcastle, although it did eventually fall to the Parliamentary side.

Union with Scotland in 1707, plus increasing industrialisation and population expansion meant that the walls were no longer a strict requirement for the security of the town.  In fact, they were confining its growth and were a barrier to trade. Many sections and most of the gates and watch towers were pulled down in the nineteenth century although some parts do remain.  Plummer Tower, although substantially altered, stands directly opposite our hostel.  Such towers would often serve as meeting rooms for town companies once their strategic role had diminished and this example, originally known as Carliol Croft Tower, was for a time named Cutlers’ Tower while in use by the tradesmen. 

With the demolition of the walls the town underwent a sustained period of development and the Carliol Square area gave rise to workshops, industrial buildings and domestic residences.  Behind these houses lay Carliol Croft, a substantial area of green land where the gentry would take their evening strolls.  The name comes from the old Carliol (or De Carleiol) family of Northumberland, wealthy merchants and parliamentarians who owned large tracts of land within the town.  The word croft meant ‘garden’ or ‘orchard’. 

Soon the birth of the railways, thanks to Newcastle’s famous sons George and Robert Stephenson, were transforming both the town and the country as a whole.  The Newcastle and North Shields Railway opened in 1839 and the station in Carliol Square was in use until 1850 when the neoclassical Central Station, designed by one of Newcastle’s foremost architects John Dobson, was built to take the increasing demand of both freight and passenger transport.

But this area holds a darker history.  Carliol Square was chosen to be the site of the borough gaol and House of Correction, designed by Dobson, in 1827.  The old prison at nearby Newgate had fallen into disrepair but why chose this particular prosperous quarter of the town for its replacement?  In reality, certain corners of the area were already gaining notoriety as places of ill-repute. 

Proximity to the river and therefore a transient sailor population meant that many of the buildings had been given over to licensed lodging houses.  In addition, the town’s court was not far away.  The area’s reputation for nefarious activities is further borne out by court records describing the large ware room buildings close-by being used as criminal hide-outs and for storing ill-gotten gains.
 
At a cost of £35000, the new building would comprise a series of radiating wings surrounded by a 25 foot wall and central tower, giving wardens a view onto the enclosed courtyard below.  The gaol housed both men and women and there were sick rooms, work rooms, a chapel and even a treadmill! 

These were still brutal times – soldiers would be recruited for the army from the prison population and sailors would be press-ganged for the navy. Executions were still held in public, as much as a form of entertainment and spectacle as a deterrent.  Capital punishment applied to pick-pocketing, horse thieving and counterfeit coining as well as to murder. Debtors could spend the rest of their lives in prison.  Use of the pillory had only ended in Newcastle in 1790 and was still used in Sunderland for a further twenty years.  However an inspector visiting the earlier Newgate gaol did find the conditions to be better than in most prisons, with proper bedding, coal fires, and occupations for the inmates such as weaving and spinning.  The opinion was growing that prisoners would improve and prosper as men if they were engaged in useful activity.  John Dobson’s remit for the new institution was that it would provide safe custody, punishment but also reformation.  So although the regime in Carliol Square would still have been harsh, a well-designed new building and the humane involvement of many charitable bodies would certainly go some way to improving the prisoners’ lot. 

But justice was still swift and unforgiving.  While many executions took place on the Town Moor, a large expanse of land on the western outskirts of the town, some were held here in Carliol Square. Subsequent excavations of the land have revealed bodies buried in quick lime which are presumably those of doomed prisoners.  Most corpses, however, would be immediately removed to the Surgeons’ Hall for medical dissection.  Any female felons fortunate to escape the gallows might find themselves sent to work in the laundry at the Holy Jesus Hospital, a short walk from here.
 
Carliol Square Gaol, which was to be the last of Newcastle’s town centre prisons, closed in 1925.  The twentieth century had arrived and the character of the area of changing.  The Laing Art Gallery contributed to the cultural growth of the quarter and the nearby new Tyne Bridge would transform the town’s transport networks and accessibility, heralding a new wave of development.  The gaol was demolished and the present building constructed in 1932.  Further archaeological excavation of this fascinating part of town will no doubt one day unearth hidden secrets of the House of Correction and the dark, criminal uses of those Ware Rooms.