It was February 1963 and, in a scene that would become commonplace at locations across Newcastle during this and the following decade, there was major construction work going on.
Sixty years ago we see work getting underway on a new office block, Thomson House in the city's Groat Market, that would be the home of the Evening Chronicle, Journal and Sunday Sun for over five decades. The older building in our main photograph was the local seat of government, the Town Hall, a sometimes controversial structure that would be knocked down in 1973.
By the start of the 1960s, the required logistics and staff numbers needed for the production of the Chronicle and its sister papers had outgrown the company's long-time Victorian-built headquarters, often referred to as Kemsley House, at the bottom of Westgate Road opposite the Royal Station Hotel. Sadly, Kemsley House, like many other notable old Newcastle buildings at the time would fall victim to the wrecking ball. The accommodation block Vita Student stands on that spot today.
