Spirits and Barrels Blue Route Location 6 Text created by Sam Batey Audio created by ian K

The Cooperage

The Cooperage is one of Newcastle's oldest, historically important buildings, and is located on the city's ancient Quayside. Dating from 1430, it is the most complete late medieval timber-framed building in Newcastle, is a grade II-star listed building; and one of the former merchants’ houses, including Bessie Surtees’ House, which survived the Great Quayside Fire of 1854.

The courtyard is said to be haunted by the ghost of William Hardwick who was killed by a press gang in 1805. A press gang were people who forced people to become sailors, they would Bop you on the head and when you woke up, you were on a ship and in the navy,

1430: The Cooperage is built. The ground floor ceiling timbers are reported to have come from a Dutch merchant ship sunk in the river Tyne.

1531: The building is granted to Thomas Horsley, a Newcastle merchant and founder of Newcastle Grammar School. For the next 200 years, until 1742, it is occupied by prominent merchant families, changing hands roughly every generation.

1841: J Robson, a silk dyer, buys the building and moves his family in.

1853: The building is used as a grocery store.

1876 - 1880: John Arthur, a time-served Cooper and a member of the Coopers Company of Newcastle, buys the building to use as a Cooperage for the manufacture of barrels for the storage of beer and whiskey. He runs the Cooperage for almost a century. After six generations the family business moves to Ponteland in 1974. What do Coopers do? Coopers make barrels for whiskey, beer and wine – these are distinct from barrels made for butter and flour, pulses and the like, which are lower quality and not meant to last. Coopering was more skilled work, and had to be more precise, as the merchants paid tax on any beer and whiskey that was shipped. Additionally, whiskey needs to mature for at least three years and occasionally as long as 25 years, so the barrels had to last that long. One final thing is that Coopers use special techniques to 'flame' the inside of a barrel to give whiskey that special oak taste.