During my years as a Cookson Country guide I passed by the Alkali pub in East Jarrow day after day throughout the year. The route didn’t change. I always directed the coach driver from Tyne Dock into Jarrow, so that I could tell the story of the development of the town, the role of Palmer’s Shipyard and the circumstances that brought about the Jarrow Crusade, as we drove down Ellison Street and along Chaytor Street. Then we would head down to St. Paul’s church for the story of the monastery and the Venerable Bede.
Unlikely as it may seem, the Alkali pub figured large in my version of the Cookson trail. I regarded it as one of the gems on the tour, since it was the only building left in the eastern part of the town that had any real significance to the story of the young Catherine Cookson. I remember working hard to evoke the sepia images of passing trams and smoky riverside industry in this part of town, but of course it all had to be played out in the minds eye, in reality we were trundling past the high fenced featureless grey units of the Bede Industrial Estate. The tale of a young Catherine struggling up Jarrow Road and Swinburne Street with a Grey Hen jug filled with ‘Me Grandor’s beeeor’ was then perfectly illustrated by the approaching Alkali, wonderfully wearing its authenticity with ‘1857′ proudly emblazoned above the door…at least it was something we could all actually see, rather than have to imagine!
One journey in particular through East Jarrow sticks in my mind. A damp and foggy morning, with everyone struggling to see anything at all out of steamed up coach windows. The landscape all around had been painted out with a thick wash of silver-grey. As the coach hissed through the bleak vista, occasional figures appeared and disappeared, and ahead, in the distance, the Alkali pub shimmered like a glorious apparition from another time… a legendary landmark making a special and welcome appearance through the mist for the tourists.
As the name indicates, the pub was built near the various chemical industries that were dotted around Jarrow Slake in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. These works transformed the healthy picturesque estuary into a heavily polluted, gloomy and lifeless industrial backwater for over a century, the perfect inspiration for an imaginative teller of tales.
To add to the mystique of the area, somewhere on the Slake in 1832 William Jobling was the last man in England to be gibbeted. I somehow don’t think Joblings spirit will be the only one restlessly haunting the Slake. Maybe long deceased chemical workers still frequent the Alkali silently searching for other spirits!
I like to think that the Alkali will stand for another 147 years and witness many more generations coming and going. Anyone looking out of the pub window in the early years of the last Century and seeing a little girl pass by with a big jug, could never guess that she would be responsible for tens of thousands of visitors a year passing by at the other end of the Century. BH.
Taken from ‘Observing Buildings’ (ISBN0-9548587-1-9) Arts Advance Press 2004
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