By John Hartley | Photograhy by Diane Wailes
“Sought-after area of North Shields offering park and river views” says the estate agent’s blurb. “A vibrant Georgian Square,” says another, with “panoramic views up and down the River Tyne”. Much the same was probably said in the mid-to-late 1700s when the square was first built. With that sort of description it is not surprising that the Square would become home to a Hollywood legend.
Yes, all right; Stan Laurel was only seven when he moved there, and only stayed for four years before heading off to Scotland, but they all count, right? His is the house on the left, at the top of the first corner if you’re travelling clockwise. It didn’t look like that then, though… Number Eight, his home, was only about halfway up the street in 1897 when he first moved in.
Initially populated by the wealthier residents of North Shields, keen to distance themselves from the hustle and bustle of the Low Town, Dockwray Square provided homes to aspire to. Tobacco manufacturers, registrars, school teachers and solicitors were amongst the occupations of those living there at the 1841 Census.
It is this level of aspiration that probably prompted my Great Great Grandfather, Joseph Rodgerson, to move there from his Grocer’s shop-cum-home on Bell Street, during the first decade of the twentieth century. By the 1911 Census the social class of the residents was beginning to fall, however, with fishermen, mariners and shipyard labourers now rubbing shoulders with the medical practitioners and druggists.
The Square’s inhabitants would quickly realise the area’s water and drainage facilities were less than satisfactory, however. Any improvements made were insufficient to stop the once privileged area becoming little more than a slum. Immediately before World War Two there were seven households living at Number Eight alone, with cinema attendants, brewery hop ploughers and dock labourers more likely to be found living there.
By the mid-1950s Dockwray Square had been demolished, replaced by an array of contemporary flats just in time for the new occupants to go and see the Beatles play down the road in Newcastle on just their fourth 1963 visit. The flats lasted longer than the Beatles but, by housing standards, not by much. In the 1980s they too were pulled down, eventually being replaced by the homes you see now. Whether or not Dockwray Square finds itself with another famous resident this century remains to be seen …
