The Gin Closet which opened earlier this month in Newcastle city centre is anything but bog standard.
The bar, which began trading on February 4, is located in what used to be a ladies' public toilet on High Bridge.
It's small but perfectly formed - measuring just 11 square metres, and catering for up to 15 drinkers at a time.
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By coincidence, just a stone's throw away, is WC – another chic wine and cocktail bar – that trades in the landmark former men's loos in the Bigg Market.
Those toilets opened in 1898 in the closing years of Queen Victoria’s reign. For more than a century, Geordie gentlemen could descend a set of winding steps to ‘spend a penny’ in the subterranean convenience.
In 2012, the toilets closed for good, and lay empty until 2020 when the site was refurbished and reborn as WC.
Both The Gin Closet and WC are owned by Steve Blair, 32, from County Durham.
He told ChronicleLive : "We have tried to maintain the new bar's character and complement the gentlemen's WC.
"Hopefully it is a lovely extension of the gentlemen's toilet bar and another bit of history that can be unravelled in Newcastle.
"They are both such unique and historic properties and it's a great thing to have that little niche to have the male and female toilets."
High Bridge, one of the few remaining medieval cobbled streets left in the city, connects the elegant Georgian Grey Street with the vibrant entertainment area of the Bigg Market, and has become a centre for independent shopping, and eating and drinking.
The one-time public toilets on High Bridge and in the Bigg Market are just some of those that have closed over time due to spending cuts.
Once upon a time, you could also spend a penny in various conveniences across the city - Percy Street, Waterloo Street, Shakespeare Street, Side, the Quayside and elsewhere.
Our photograph of the ladies' public toilets on High Bridge dates from August 1995, when the Chronicle reported how they, along with others in Newcastle, would soon be going down the pan.
"City's old toilets meet their Waterloo and dearer-to-use superloos are to replace them," we noted as the city council stated how it wanted to make savings on the reported £650,000-a-year cost of running the loos.
"Council chiefs want to pull down some of the city's old Victorian public conveniences and replace them with modern toilets.
"But people using the new self-cleaning loos, complete with hand basins and even piped music, will have to pay 10p or 20p for the privilege."
It seems though that public loos at one time weren't such a drain on resources.
Local historian Steve Ellwood points out that in Newcastle's council minutes from 1896-97, it was reported "the underground urinal in the Bigg Market has been most successful both financially and in regard to the convenience they provide".
In the same minutes, however, it noted that Victorian ladies didn't seem at all keen on spending a penny in public conveniences: "Several towns were written to and it was found these urinals and accommodations for females were not a success."
Coming back up to date, the closure of public toilets is an issue which continues to impact across the country.
The Guardian reported last November that "the number of public lavatories that local authorities have funded and maintained fell from 3,154 in 2015/16 to 2,556 in 2020/21 – a drop of 19% across the past six years, which comes on top of reductions in previous years".
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