The Carabao Cup-winning heroes of Newcastle United will parade the trophy through the streets of the city before presenting this Saturday at a party on the city of Moor. Here we go back to 1952 to capture what a cup win means for Tyneside, and the feeling was as strong as it is today …
Payed but precarious, given her grip on the curved Georgian architecture of the pub from which she has climbed through a window on the first floor, a Geordie Lass probably has the best Richel in the street while the FA Cup winners of Newcastle United unhappy through the crowd below rolls.
She dares not to give the wave of star player Jackie Milburn and Captain Joe Harvey the first of three buses back for fear of an awkward date with the sidewalks of Gray Street. Her boyfriend is more brave and raises an arm in the greeting of the cup heroes and takes the wide -blown position of a heavyweight boxer to protect against the fall.
In the shadow of the 134ft-high Gray's Monument-Buouw in 1838 in honor of Premier Charles Gray-and around the buses that are supplied by the appropriate United Automobile Services, there are neck tilted, children in the shoulders, wooden rattle and black and white.
The overcoats are unusual and a weather report registers 'cloudy', but the mood is clearly radiant.
This is Monday, May 5, 1952 and shortly before 7 p.m. Forty-eight hours earlier and 300 miles south in Wembley, Newcastle had what the second of three FA cups would be in five years. There were 100,000 attendees to see Chileen Vooruit George Robledo score the only goal versus Arsenal.
Here, in the beating heart of the Newcastle city center, there are a quarter of a million happy souls, so the head of the Journal and North Mail goes from the next morning – '250,000 Stop City in Great Welcome'.
It is with good reason that Prime Minister William Gladstone Gray Street labeled Gray Street that the best in this country. The passage of time may have eroded the brickwork, but no charm.
I returned to the exact place where our photo was taken. The stone ledge on which our heroine clambered is still there, no more than one foot deep. So too, is the groove in which she dug her fingernails. Who was she?
In the Central Library of Newcastle I find in the archives the words of a lady who is only mentioned as Eliza. “My husband worked on the couch in Gray Street and we were watching Joe Harvey and the team with the cup in the couch.” At the top right of the photo there is that bank, Lloyds, who stays today. Maybe Eliza is in shot?
Further research shows that the pub above the women is the grapes safes, now a block of HSBC money machines.
But not only those ladies were brave by the Victorian sliding window, they were primarily daring by walking the front door. The pub was the last 'only' bar in Newcastle before the closure in the 80s. They never installed a toilet for ladies.
Next to the door is Mawson, Swan & Morgan. The iconic stationary store traded more than 100 years before it was closed in 1986. It is now chic outlet.
A friend suggests that I speak with a gentleman with the name Bob Richardson. He is 92 years old and lived in Newcastle in the 1950s. I mention a fixed line and when he answers, I explain the scene of our photo.
“I remember that day,” he starts. “I was 21 and a trading student at Newcastle University. You see the stationary store, I bought my pads, pencils and textbooks in it.
“But I couldn't afford Wembley. I left the university library and waited for the parade at Haymarket. I remember the exuberance of the crowd. We just came from the war years. There was a feeling that football was exciting, it brought real companionship.
'I was in the same place a few months earlier when George VI died. The entire city seemed to come out and to express their respect. The cup parade was the same, only a lot of happier opportunity. '
The buses were not interesting 'open-top' and explains why three were needed. Instead, the 'Bristol' model had a sunroof with a platform that was assembled inside on which players were on. While they traveled through the city and to St James' Park, where 45,000 fans and a copper band waited, they passed a young couple on Barrack Road. My wife's grandmother, Joan Caddle, was in the midst of the crowd outside of Newcastle Brewery.
“I only remember it as 1952 because we got married that summer and Jackie and I were about years when we went to the cup to come home,” says Joan. 'I have never been a football fan, but I remember that moment so clearly. The bus that comes by, the excitement. '
Back in the library, the diary provides fascinating reading. Their reporter was on the bus.
“On Gray Street, the whole of Newcastle seems to run after us,” he writes. 'The cup has changed owner and now the local idol Tommy Walker has it. Every few seconds he bends over the side and enables fans to touch it.
“One man has three children on his shoulders, one on top of the other. All waving frantically and he can hardly keep his feet. The Ticker tape is like snow, and the waving like a thousand weddings are all in one. Frank Brennan blows kisses on the crowd. Tommy Walker stumbles and falls, but he is unharmed. '
The same day edition of the Evening Chronicle – The Rival Newspaper and later published – the Parade does not wear on the front page. I worked there 50 years later and the Mantra remained the same: “If the magazine first had it, find something else.”
And there is the alternative, the story of a nine -year -old boy who was feared in the crowds of last night who look at the return home. ” Fortunately, William Douglas was found 'crying in a ditch' after being lost. He had a 'black and white favor on the lapel of his overcoat'.
In the advertisements, competing cinemas – Ritz, Olympia, Coliseum – advertise – a repeat of the cup -final. In the Theater Royal, next to Lloyds Bank, a performance of the Gang Show brought a tribute to the Newcastle players only an hour after the buses were passed through his majestic facade in Pantheon. In other news, and tucked away, skipper Harvey appears later that week as a witness of £ 350 Cup in a Cup-Cup cup hearing.
In the meantime, back in the modern Gray Street, shoppers are shooting in and out of the metro station where the old road once ran. You can only hope, if not somewhere among us, that our heroine on the ledge will view this weekend from an even bigger vatch.
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