Newcastle’s historic Grainger Market was opened in October 1835 and has played a major part in the shopping experience of Geordies ever since. Now a £9 million upgrade is planned which will help it to rival the best markets in Europe. But why is that important to the city of Newcastle?
£9 million upgrade
Grainger Market, in the centre of Newcastle, one of the most historic markets in Britain, is getting a £9mn revamp, with the work set to be completed soon. Newcastle Council claims that it could then “rival the best in Europe”. Grainger Market is Grade I-listed and the work to upgrade the market began in September 2024.
The council has also thanked residents and traders for their “patience and support”. The improvements were originally due to be completed in the summer of 2024. In an update on 5 January, Newcastle City Council said that the work was “on track to be completed early this year”.
Grainger Market is nearly 200 years old and plays a major role in the life of Newcastle, with local traders selling everything from baked goods and fresh fish to hardware and vintage clothes.
It was also noted that “the restoration project includes repairs to the roof, new toilet facilities, new ceramic tiling and two new pavilions in the heart of the arcade”.
Background to Grainger Market
Grainger Market is named after Richard Grainger, who was the property developer behind many of the traditional buildings that we see in Newcastle city centre today. Indeed, the area around the market was rebranded as Graingertown in the 1990s, in what has happily been a successful attempt to regenerate the area. The classical style used by architects Granger used, such as John Dobson and the Green brothers has even been given its own name; Tyneside Classical.
Grainger’s story is a very interesting one, involving somebody who reached great heights from which he unfortunately fell. He was born in 1797 into a fairly poor family but still managed to get some education and learn to read and write and crucially he also learned accountancy. This enabled him to put a building company together with his brother and they began to be involved in the local building trades starting with new buildings for a local alderman at Higham Place near to what is now the Laing Art Gallery.
However, Grainger’s really big break came when he married into the wealthy Arundale family by marrying Rachel Arundale in 1821. This gave him better access to funding, through connections to people like John Clayton. He was then able to take further plans for a fundamental rebuilding of Newcastle town centre (Newcastle only became a city in 1882), which was basically still in its medieval form.
These plans were to include what became Grey Street, Grainger Street and of course the Grainger Market itself. Grainger Market was opened in October 1835 and there was a grand dinner put on for 2000 well connected Newcastle people. Now, when I say people, I actually mean… men. There was a special balcony built for about 300 ‘ladies’ to sit and watch the men including Dobson and Granger having their celebratory meal! Not a great part of our history, but what can you say? They were different times…
Grainger Market has a number of features to this day which remind us of its history. There is a Marks and Spencer’s Penny Bazaar, which is the oldest functioning Marks and Spencer shop in the world. The shop frontage also includes the original gaslight frames.
There is also the Weigh House, a reminder that when the market opened customers would tend to buy items like flour and then bake their own bread at home. The Weigh House was installed just to check that traders were getting the correct amount for they were paying.
People also used to go and get weighed at the Weigh House, and having been weighed their weight would be shouted out across all those who were in the area. I’m not sure if I would have appreciated that! However, you can still get weighed at the Weigh House at Grainger Market, but now you are discreetly given a ticket to show how much you weigh! In the Weigh House there is also an excellent painting showing the opening ceremony and meal… and the ladies up to sit on the balcony watching the men eating….
As for Grainger, he made a huge profit from the building of the market and his other work this had the effect of making him think that he was somehow infallible. Indeed, once what we now call Graingertown had been completed in the late 1830s, then Grainger had another idea, that showed his hubris only too well.
Having rebuilt Newcastle town centre, in the Tyneside Classical style, which we still admire so much today, he then decided to borrow the then astronomical amount of £100,000 and buy Elswick Hall, about a mile to the west of the city centre. There he had a plan to build a new railway station as a terminus for the new Newcastle and Carlisle railway line and a whole new centre for Newcastle.
Unsurprisingly, the people of Newcastle were not interested and were quite happy with the new town centre Grainger had helped to provide them. Consequently, Grainger ran up a huge amount of debt and he ran away, first to Penrith and then to Scotland.
It was his old friend, John Clayton, who told him he must return and face up to his debts and his creditors, and Clayton even found Grainger a house on Clayton Street. However, Grainger had to continue working to pay off his debts and was still working on the morning of the day that he died in 1861.
For all his faults, the people of Newcastle remembered him fondly and there was a huge turnout at his funeral. And as the saying goes, if you want to see his legacy, “look around you”!
