I filmed the old Oxford Galleries, Newcastle, on New Bridge Street on one of my regular walks, before I knew much about it beyond the obvious, that it was once a dance hall and later a nightclub under several different names. That’s usually how it goes with these clips. I film what stops me, and I look into the history afterwards. Sometimes the story that comes back is straightforward. Sometimes, like with this building, it’s worth checking twice, because not everything that gets repeated about a place turns out to be true.

What Actually Happened Here

The building opened in 1923, built by City Amusements for around £75,000, and started life as a dance hall in 1925. Music on opening night came from the London Sonara Band, who had also played for King George V and Queen Mary. What most people walking past probably don’t realise is that it’s built onto the side of a much older building: John Dobson’s own house, put up in 1825 and separately Grade II* listed. Dobson was the architect behind a good part of Georgian Newcastle, and his house is still there, absorbed into the corner of a building most people know for entirely different reasons.

Through the following decades it stayed a ballroom, home to tea dances and live orchestras, before turning into a nightclub in 1971 under the name Tiffany’s, then later Ritzy’s, Ikon, and a run of other names before it closed for good. It’s a real filming location too, appearing in Get Carter in 1971 and later in the television series Spender, which is a better story than the one I’d half-remembered before I checked.

A Small Building Holding Its Ground

By the time I filmed this in 2023, the old stone building was still standing on its own, “The Oxford” still carved above the door, with a tall new student accommodation block built up right beside it and other buildings nearby still wrapped in scaffolding. It’s an odd thing to see up close, a small, ornate 1920s building holding its ground next to something built to house several hundred students, both of them occupying the same stretch of street with almost nothing in common.

These clips, including this one of Oxford Galleries, Newcastle, are part of an ongoing series I shoot while walking through Newcastle and Gateshead, usually no longer than 30 seconds, filmed on impulse with no script and often no people in frame. You can see more on my Newcastle & Gateshead Landscapes Instagram, or in my wider Landscape & Environment work.

I filmed a similar empty building on the other side of the city centre for Filming Urban Decay on an iPhone: Newcastle’s Empty Coloured Flats, an old office block above Market Street East, shot on a phone in much the same way.