intu Eldon Square

entrance to Eldon Square, now redeveloped.]] During the 1960s, the leader of the city council, T. Dan Smith, set the groundwork for a new shopping centre. He intended to use the famous Danish architect Arne Jacobsen; however this fell through. Old Eldon Square was nonetheless controversially redeveloped in the mid 1970s, with Christopher Booker writing in 1978 that it was "perhaps the greatest single example of architectural vandalism in Britain since the war. Until ten years ago this most handsome piece of old Newcastle, with its blackened, post-classical frontages survived intact. Today only one side remains, the rest dominated by the astonishingly brutal shopping centre put up by Capital…

The shopping centre occupies an area close to the old town wall, which followed the course of Blackett Street. This means the modern shopping centre is built on either side of where the wall once stood. From a map drawn by Charles Hutton in 1770, it appears that the ancient wall would have run parallel with the south side of Blackett street. This is the northernmost wall of the southern portion of the shopping centre. The YMCA Building, erected in the late 19th century, formed part of the former Blackett Street frontage. As the city would have grown within its town walls, just south of the north wall was the Nunn's Garden. This is around the location of the now demolished Green Market. The…