The netties no longer there to provide welcome relief

If you were out and about in Newcastle and needed to 'spend a penny', this public convenience on Shakespeare Street was one of the many places where the call of nature could be answered.

- By DAVID MORTON Reporter [e-mail]

Today the underground gents’ loos are long gone, along with numerous other public toilets that once dotted the city centre.

Most of these ‘netties’ dated from the final decades of the 19th century, built to serve the ever-growing numbers of shoppers, workers, theatre-goers and visitors who thronged Newcastle. Recent research by academics at Newcastle University shows that by the early 20th century there were more than 80 public toilets in the city centre.

Perhaps the best known was the large underground circular convenience in the Bigg Market, which much later gained the nickname of the ‘flying saucer’ loos. Opened in 1898, just three years before the end of the Victorian age, the 18 urinals and five cubicles provided welcome relief for Geordie gentlemen until their closure in 2012.