Wallsend
Wallsend Miners Welfare Institute
Last Updated:
3 Apr 2025
Wallsend
This is a
Institute
54.993358, -1.536486
Founded in
Current status is
Extant
Designer (if known):
Frank Caws Steel & Caws
Now a function hall
Just another slightly under-appreciated building at Wallsend. This one is the towns Miners Welfare Institute from back when you could still class this place as a pit village.
Specifically, this one was to cater for the workers of the G Pit and the Rising Sun pit. It was opened in 1925 in an area void of a miners institute prior. Institutes were effectively community spaces - libraries, social clubs, lecture theatres and functions rooms were all added to provide a meeting space away from the shaft.
It was designed by Sunderland firm Frank Caws, Steel & Caws. Frank had died by this point but he had designed the Elephant Tea Rooms and the terracotta Corder & Sydenham House on Fawcett Street. His firm, presumably carried on by his sons, also designed the Wallsend Memorial Hall nearby in the same year.
Inside featured a large hall for political meetings and functions, a billiard room, a spring dance floor, library & reading rooms as well as other recreation rooms at a cost of £7000. The former Labour leader J R Clynes actually spoke at a rally here soon after opening.
Since then it’s been a snooker hall and a social club - today a large function suite.
Listing Description (if available)
The Institute can be seen on both these Ordnance Survey plans from the 1930s and 1950s. It stands on Station Road, nearby the Buddle Schools and the North Road where much of Wallsend's amenities came to be when the High Street was crammed. This includes a new mission hall, the Allen Memorial Church as well as further schools just west. It took a prime spot on the main lane down from Benton into the area, convenient for those who worked at the Rising Sun and still close for those who worked at the G Pit.
Swan Street as it was known in the 1890s was still quite underdeveloped, with housing developments favoured further west. This area was dominated by the school and Richardson Dees Park was yet to be opened - still the remains of the C Pit at this stage. It would be in the following couple of decades this place would become what we understand today, as seen on the maps above.
The Institute under the guise of the NE28 Suite in March 2025.
The Institute as the CIU Rising Sun Social Club around half a century ago. Unknown source.
The site as a snooker slub and gym around the 90s/early 2000s. Unknown photographer.