Walking tour guide Ian Mole takes us on a tour of the places in Sunderland's city - formerly town - centre where some favourite Wearside pubs of the 60s were located
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00:00 Hello, my name is Ian Mall and I conduct several walking tours of Sunderland City Centre.
00:05 One of which is the topic we're going to talk about today, which is lost 60s pubs of Sunderland Town Centre.
00:13 Now I'm standing in front of what is now the Railway Club.
00:17 Back in the 60s, 70s it used to be known as the Park Inn.
00:22 And this straight park lane was a very lively place, it still is now, but we had the rink dance hall up here.
00:29 And the bus station was there of course, so people would pop in for one or two.
00:34 My brother was in there about 1967 I think it was.
00:38 And who should he see across the bar but Sunderland AFC's star left winger, George Mullaw, having a couple of pints.
00:45 Not unusual maybe, but this was on a Saturday just before George was due to play at Walker Park.
00:51 So he watched him go out the door, get on the bus and go and play.
00:54 So this wasn't that unusual in those days.
00:57 I don't know if you had a quick fog upstairs on the way there, but this is not recorded.
01:02 The Park Inn also has a Beatle connection which I have to thank Sunderland Antiquarians for.
01:07 I recently discovered this.
01:09 Ringo Starr's mam's sister got married to a bloke from Millfield.
01:14 And Ringo used to come up to Sunderland every now and again to see his auntie and uncle.
01:19 He'd be about 17, 18 then, so we're talking about 1957, 58.
01:24 And they'd have a few drinks in the town centre. One of the places they went to was the Park Inn.
01:28 So the Beatles played here five times, so I didn't know they'd gone drinking here as well.
01:33 So here we are outside of Chaplains, a very popular pub.
01:36 But back in my day in the late 60s, early 70s it was known as the Albion, a Vaux pub.
01:41 So as most people will know Vaux was the local brewery.
01:44 But ironically most of my mates, they didn't like Vaux beer apart from a bottle of Double Maxim.
01:49 Most people liked Newcastle Exhibition.
01:51 It was a beautiful drink mind. I don't know, I don't think you can still get it now.
01:55 But over the years Chaplains has gradually taken over the adjoining buildings.
01:59 So every time I go in they seem to have added an extra little nook and cranny, which I like very much.
02:04 So we're standing here next to the Priestman building in Durham Road.
02:08 And just behind me, until 1973 I think it was, was a great pub called The Star.
02:14 Back in the day we used to get a lot of Norwegian students come to Sunderland.
02:18 To study design and ships or wherever it might be.
02:22 And they were famous for drinking pubs dry.
02:24 They had a nickname which is not a rude word.
02:27 It was from a TV programme for kids called Noggin the Nog, a Viking.
02:32 So everybody called them the Nogs and they seemed quite happy with that.
02:35 So they were well known in the town where I lived in, Element Street.
02:38 There was a Norwegian student living next door upstairs.
02:41 And they were quite popular with the local ladies I seem to recall.
02:45 One of my friends was married to a Norwegian guy who was a study teacher.
02:48 And she lived in Norway for 40 years.
02:51 I have a little personal connection with The Star because the last time me grandad Bob Jones came out unassisted.
03:01 He was on his way to The Star from his home in Element Street.
03:04 He was walking down Durham Road and he had a stroke.
03:07 And he said I saw The Star jump from one side of the road to the other.
03:11 And he managed to make it back home and they took him to Ryap Hospital and he died there.
03:16 But it was a very popular place for him and his old Codger mates.
03:20 I was just coming up to 18 at that time.
03:23 So before then me grandad, he didn't bother with kids.
03:26 They were like women's business as far as he was concerned.
03:29 But me brother was a bit older than me and he started taking me brother to the pub and talking to him man to man.
03:34 But he never really spoke to me before that.
03:36 So I was just coming up to the age where he would have invited me to but it wasn't to happen sadly.
03:41 So here we are at the bottom of Old Chester Road.
03:44 Behind me back in the, until the late 70s I think, there was a big triangle of streets.
03:50 And a lot of the kids I went to Chester Road School with used to live here.
03:54 And right at the very tip of the triangle there was an incy little pub called The Phoenix.
03:59 It looked to me like that some people had lived there and thought let's just make our house into a pub.
04:06 It felt like that. It was really small and sort of cosy.
04:09 It closed 1974 I believe and before then it was the only in the coop Burton's Bay is in Sunderland.
04:18 So it's well gone. Everything's gone.
04:21 So here we are inside Vesta Tilly's in High Street.
04:25 Back in the 60s, 70s and later it was known as the Black Bull.
04:29 And if you've heard the Derek and Clive records you'll be acquainted with the stories of the worst job I ever had.
04:35 Well I have to say this was the worst job I ever had in my life.
04:38 I was only 18 in 1972.
04:41 I previously had a paper round but this was kind of upping it a bit when a friend of a friend said
04:47 "Ian, can you be a glass collector at the pot boy at the Black Bull on the weekends?"
04:52 And I thought "Aye, we'll give it a go." I needed some money and it was really awful.
04:57 I mean collecting the glasses wasn't too bad.
05:00 You'd have problems like you had to go out obviously from behind the bar and collect all the glasses up.
05:05 So you had to use a little flap in the bar and there'd be two old codgers sitting there against the flap.
05:12 The whole of the bar might have been empty but they always sat there and you had to keep asking them to get out of the way
05:16 about every 10 minutes and they didn't take it too kindly.
05:20 Also around about this time there'd been a few pubs in Croke Re Road which is under the leisure centre now.
05:27 There was the Red Lion, the Three Tones and the Croke Tree.
05:31 So they'd closed and quite a few of their regulars had sort of decamped to the Black Bull.
05:38 And the manager said "Ian, can you go and ask those old ladies to stop singing?"
05:43 And let's see, I asked them to stop singing but they didn't take it too kindly.
05:48 But the first night I was there they made it much, much worse.
05:51 They said "Ian, the bar mate hasn't turned up. Can you take her place?"
05:55 I mean I had absolutely no training whatsoever.
05:58 Somebody asked us for a rummy mac, but I'd never heard of a rummy mac then.
06:02 And people were getting very angry.
06:04 I just remember I could see a face, a sea of hostile faces staring at us from behind the other side of the bar.
06:11 It was really awful.
06:13 So I did it for about three weekends and I couldn't take it anymore.
06:16 And I think I told the guy I was going on holiday or something.
06:20 I told him that and about two days later he passed us in the street.
06:23 He didn't say anything so maybe he understood.
06:26 So before the bridges was all modernised and covered over,
06:30 it used to be a very windy shopping centre, Walworth Way.
06:34 And at the junction where the kids are playing in the sand today,
06:39 upstairs there used to be a pub called The Upper Deck.
06:41 I think it opened in 1967.
06:44 And it was a very popular place to meet before you went out.
06:47 We used to have a little pub crawl of the town and then go to a nightclub back in the 70s and 60s.
06:53 But it closed a long time ago and now I've discovered it's somebody's private apartment.
07:00 You can't see it like it's all covered up these days.
07:02 So we're in Lampton Street now.
07:04 And I had to take a good look around because I couldn't recognise this place at all.
07:08 But I'm led to believe it's what used to be Lampton Street.
07:12 This was a great place for drinking in the 60s and 70s.
07:15 Just behind me where the cinema is or was, there were two good pubs.
07:21 The Caledonia and the Imperial Vaults.
07:24 Everybody called them the Cali and the Imps.
07:27 The Cali was unusual in that the closing time was 10 o'clock.
07:30 Everywhere else at that time was 10.30.
07:33 The Cali closed in 1997 and the Imps in 2002.
07:38 But they were just a hop and a skip from John Street so it's very much still in the town centre.
07:44 My main memory of the Imps is not a very happy one.
07:46 It was Christmas Eve 1973.
07:48 I was waiting for my friend at the back door and suddenly the back door burst open.
07:52 And two big lads bundled out. One of them punched the other one in the head.
07:56 And when he hit the deck he started booting him in the head.
07:59 I thought well the spirit of Christmas is here. Not.
08:02 So back in my early drinking days the building over the road was quite a new place.
08:07 It was called the Continental. It had opened in 1957.
08:11 I have to say it seemed very big to me then.
08:14 So we used to go in on the ground floor mainly, sometimes downstairs.
08:18 A couple of memories.
08:21 I remember being there with my big sister and her friends in April 1970.
08:26 And Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky was number one.
08:29 It really captures the essence of that time.
08:32 I was downstairs there once and I just wanted a half.
08:36 As I ordered the half this heavy looking guy at the bar next to us said "What a man!"
08:41 Across the street you can see My Deli.
08:45 It's one of my favourite Indian places in Sunderland by the way.
08:48 But back in the drinking days it was known as the Palatine until 1971.
08:54 It had a posh hotel at the back.
08:56 If you're a music fan, Pete Kirk had stayed there in October 1971.
09:00 It was famous for drinking.
09:02 I used to go a lot in the 70s and 80s when it changed its name to the Mowbray.
09:08 And I remember that especially in the 80s.
09:12 So later on in the 80s when I wasn't around here much,
09:15 I took a road downstairs called Dolhams.
09:18 And maybe you're one of the lucky people who saw the flash clear there in 1985.
09:22 This area has changed out of all recognition since the 60s.
09:26 With the increase in road traffic we've had to build more streets obviously.
09:30 If you came off the bridge in the 60s, there was a little tiny street.
09:35 You came up here and then you turned right into John Street.
09:38 And Essan Way was just even a narrower little street.
09:41 So there used to be various pubs.
09:43 There was one right here called the Argo Frigate.
09:46 It was demolished in 1966 I believe.
09:50 I've got a bit of a soft spot for it because my first teacher in Chester Road Juniors in 1959 was Miss Reid.
09:57 And her parents were publicans at this pub.
10:01 And I do believe Miss Reid left teaching to take over the pub.
10:05 So that was an interesting career move.
10:07 And if you look over to our left, just approximately where the green traffic lights are,
10:13 there was a nice looking pub which I never went in called the Bridge End Vaults.
10:17 I think that was demolished in 1971.
10:20 And I was only 17 then but of course I still went out drinking a bit.
10:25 And I never got as far as this.
10:27 There were enough places locally in the town centre to cater for our needs.
10:31 So we're just across the road from where Vauxhall's Brewery used to be until 2000.
10:37 Opinions are divided but whenever I got off the train from London and I came back,
10:41 I loved the smell of the hops from the brewery.
10:44 A lot of people told us it made them sick but I thought it was great.
10:48 Anyway, so the brewery closed in 2000.
10:52 The tap house for the brewery was the Brewery Taphouse in the little street on the right.
10:56 The street wasn't there anymore.
10:58 So the pub had been there a very long time.
11:00 It was previously called the Neptune but it became Vauxhall's Pub in 1974.
11:05 And I used to go in quite a lot.
11:07 It closed at the same time as the brewery in 2000.
11:10 So as you can probably see, we're in High Street West.
11:13 There was a pub opened here in 1969 called the Gannett.
11:16 It was approximately here.
11:19 I thought big when they got some important person to open it.
11:22 They got Charlie Hurley, the number one player of all time for Sunderland of course.
11:27 I used to go in occasionally. It was called Downstairs Bar.
11:30 And I used to go in in the early 70s.
11:32 It had various names later on. Digby's and Mondo's or something like that.
11:37 But of course it's all been swallowed up by Primark and everything.
11:40 Thanks for taking the time to watch the video.
11:43 If you want to come on one of my tours, I've got a Facebook site.
11:47 Lost 60s Pubs of Sunderland Town Centre.
11:50 I also want to say a big thank you to Alan Brett.
11:53 Because I did a lot of research using his books.
11:56 All Pubs of Sunderland Volumes 1 and 2.
11:58 I do recommend them as well.