No Quarter

I need to say at once I cannot pity anyone who describes a place in an English city as a 'Quarter'. I despise them. But even criminals and narks have a role to play, as the famous historian E.P. Thompson wrote; without them we would know far less about historic figures. In the case of the over promoted estate agents who work tirelessly to file down what is left of the meaning and significance of living in a city rather than a corporate dream park of the wish fulfilment of the mediocre, we can use them and their brochures – a favourite weapon – to define exactly what is shallow and worthless about today's planners.

Fantasy or wilful deception? Do these people believe in what they are promoting? Are they just pretending?

Pilgrim Street is being 'regenerated'. In science fiction this is always an 'iffy' moment. What's coming? Well, in this case, I am certain, more corporate crap.

The Odeon cinema on Pilgrim Street, with its officially protected Grade Listed interior, was knocked down this year. Or fell down. But the protected Grade Listed interior had by then been smashed up by the owners to ensure the building shouldn't survive; the city council even chipped in for the cost of demolition further down Pilgrim Street, taking away one of the few distinguished modern buildings to grace the city. Money doesn't speak. It gets its own way.

 The former Bank of England Building on Pilgrim Street.
Years of studied neglect can't quite hide the quality.

The whole of this part of the city centre where the Odeon once stood has been given the usual label: the Pilgrim Quarter. The plans – that are actually less plans, more some kind of pants wetting fantasy – show a series of glass frontages linked to hollowed out existing façades that cannot be pulled down or persuaded to fall down.

I seriously doubt any of the developers, their bank managers in Panama or Grand Cayman, P.R. people, or city planners have read their Kierkegaard –

"A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but a revolutionary which is at the same time reflective and passionless leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance," 

– words that seem just, well, so apt. Quarter is a smarmy label that proposes a sort of false history, more surface than reality. A old friend told me about how a north east development agency wished to remove the reality of the fisherman's life when it re-developed a quayside. A few good old boys sitting about mending nets, but no beat up vans and piles of plastic boxes full of stinky fish scales ...


Beyond the flashy images and gushing prose –

"The East Pilgrim Street ... represents one of the most strategically important City Centre regeneration areas in the north of England. Newcastle has consistently been identified as a location for major retail growth and provides the space for the retail, leisure and commercial core to expand." (1) [Emphasis added.]

– lies a rather brutal fact, Newcastle is not Manchester nor Birmingham; it commands no great hinterland of punters and all its ancient and traditional industries are but a memory. Where is the economic base to support these grandiose and verbose statements? Where does it live? Gosforth 'village'? The Wallsend Quarter?

The size of the available 'pot' has not escaped Intu, whose own Eldon Square up the street was built over the Grade II Listed (sic) Eldon Square, an earlier crime in the upward progress of Newcastle's assent into the Big Time.  When, earlier in the softening up process, the gushing wall of P.R. fell over Intu they were not best pleased, having, one assumes, worked personfully to keep the shop lights on in their own empire during a long and painful economic recession since 2008:

"Plans to turn Newcastle into the biggest retail centre in the North could instead send shops across the city into “a downward spiral of decline".

The owners of Newcastle’s Eldon Square shopping centre have told a planning inquiry into the future of Tyneside that hopes of eventually turning East Pilgrim Street into an £800m shopping centre to rival the likes of Harvey Nichols and Selfridges could fatally damage existing retail centres.

Bosses at Intu want to see Newcastle Council forced to promise an impact test on any new shopping centre." (2)

No dice.

"Harvey Emms, the council’s most senior development official, said the East Pilgrim Street plan was there to cement the city’s place in the region". (3)

Region. Does Mr Emms get out much? Newcastle is smack in the centre of a large 'region' of sheep rearing and forestry, set well away from prosperous heartlands in the English Midlands. Perhaps he was thinking of Middlesbrough? Cramlington? Or, ... Sunderland? Newcastle is going to have to find lots and lots of people with deep pockets who choose to spend their great wealth in this city. They are going to be spoilt for choice.

Coda

One of the more amusing aspects to this Fantasy of the Quarters, is the memory I have speaking last century to a previous Mr Joy Boy and well paid over-promoted estate agent who planned something remarkably similar to that proposed for the city today (tomorrow, whenever?); a barely sentient population of credit card carrying punters apparently, borrowing money they could not repay for stuff they did not need at prices they could not afford. This nonsense went by the epithet "High Street U.K." during a break in the pep talk to the assembled suits and money grubbers present, I asked about the contribution of the arts to this city's well being and regeneration. Artists, he announced (he was of that type described by Queen Victoria as speaking to her as if addressing a public meeting), were degenerates and perverts. Next question.

The Banker's Crash that swept to destruction Mr J.B.'s plans to build a Fifth Avenue on the Tyne resulted in empty properties all over the city. Around the as yet to be damned with a label Pilgrim Street, former shops and offices standing dismally empty were let out as temporary spaces to em, ... artists ...

"Norham House, a former office block that used to be occupied by lawyers and accountants, had in more recent times been home to artists.

After 2010, Norham House became better known as The NewBridge Project with a street level gallery and bookshop and a warren of studios, workshops and exhibition spaces.

It run a programme of exhibitions, talks and other events and has been a popular destination during the annual Late Shows in Newcastle and Gateshead." (4)




1. NCC website updated 27th July 2017. Retrieved 4th September 2017.

2. Newcastle Journal 11th June 2014. Retrieved 4th September 2017.

3. Ibid

4. Newcastle Journal 13th June 2017. Retrieved 4th September 2017.