Posts by venue: Local History

Pilgrim Street and the Newe House

The other day I was stood at the bus stop in Pilgrim Street, in front of the old Odeon, when the Number 1 bus to Slatyford suddenly transformed into a hay wain pulled by four oxen and two horses… Well,… Read more

Better than JMW Turner? Thomas Girtin’s ‘Morpeth Bridge’ watercolour

Was Girtin a better watercolourist than JMW Turner? Turner himself seemed to say so – after his friend’s early death, Turner remarked, If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved. He was exaggerating wildly, of course, but Turner’s words… Read more

Discovery Museum welcomes home World War One objects

At the end of a discussion with Mr Richardson and his wife at Discovery Museum today I found myself quite emotional! We had spoken a few times on the phone to arrange this meeting. For years Mr Richardson had been… Read more

The Fatal Beam…

This has just landed on my desk:- It’s a small, irregularly shaped lump of iron fixed to a wooden base.  They say every object tells a story, but this one has come to me straight from the Mouth of Hell.… Read more

Recent discoveries and challenges on the Sunderland Shipbuilding Archives Project

For the past month I’ve been busy cataloguing the ships photographs of several Sunderland shipyards, including those for Sir James Laing & Sons Ltd and J.L. Thompson & Sons Ltd. There are thousands of fantastic images of ships launches and… Read more