NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

eat, drink or smoke whilst the entertainment was going on. Also it was not
necessary to be there when the show started, nor stay to the end and when in
the hall it was often possible to walk about freely without interference. Lastly
there was audience participation and they left the theatre feeling happy in the
knowledge that they had been part of the proceedings.
There were a number of Music Halls in Newcastle town centre, the earliest of
which seems to have been the Old Wheatsheaf in the Cloth Market. It was a pub
with a singing room and it was there in 1862 that George Ridley wrote Blaydon
Races. The first performance of Ridley’s song was allegedly at a benefit for Harry
Clasper, who was born in Dunstan in 1812 and was the inventor of a racing skull,
which won the world championship in 1845 with his two brothers. Boat races
between the High Level Bridge and Scotswood Bridge were the most popular
sport in the area during the middle of the 19 th century. The Old Wheatsheaf
became the Oxford music Hall between 1858 and 1865. Another early palace of
delights was the Victoria Rooms at the head of Grey Street, which became the
Victoria Music Hall. On Grainger Street stood the Vaudeville but it was burned
down in 1900. In 1877 the Oxford and the Victoria were joined by a third Music
Hall, the Westgate Hall of Varieties. The Hippodrome on Northumberland Road
also became a Music Hall, this one having been a conversion, as so many were,
out of Ginnett’s Circus. By the eighties and the nineties Music Hall was also
attracting the middle classes and the true working class spirit of the old halls was
beginning to wane. The older halls began to fade out; reverting back to public
houses, grills and billiard halls and in their place newer theatres appeared. There
were several Newcastle Empires, the first in 1878 on the site of the Scotch Arms.
It was rebuilt in 1890 and again in 1903. Grainger’s Music Hall in Nelson Street
became the Gaiety Theatre of Varieties and the Percy Hall and Cirque in Percy
Street became the Palace Theatre. These later variety theatres also served as
general purpose halls and change was in the air. By the turn of the 20 th century
Music Hall had lost much of its distinctive atmosphere as it became bigger and
more opulent. Individual halls were incorporated in big chains such as Moss
Empires and whereas the core of the old Music Hall programme had been comic
songs and choruses with everyone joining in it became less of a communal
experience in bigger theatres that were more respectable, and participation
became more restrained. Music Hall had started as an almost defiant expression
of working class culture but it became ‘Big Business’ until eventually it was just
another branch of the growing entertainment’s industry catering for passive
audiences.
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