John Street
- Category: Sunderland
- Published: Monday, 08 July 2019 21:30
- Written by Dave Bell
- Hits: 634
Today John Street can be described as a street of two halves. To the north of St Thomas Street the block is dominated by Joplings department store. Go south and it is as if you are crossing a boundary. The south end of the street is far more business-like with the former grand houses of the middle classes being used primarily as offices.
The buildings in the street were erected at various times between 1800 and 1850 and originally housed many important Wearside businessmen and their families. It was part of a group of residential streets that included Fawcett Street Street, Foyle Street and Frederick Street. Fawcett Street was named after John Fawcett, the one-time Recorder of Durham and the other streets after his sons.
In its early days, John Street was the epitome of sedate, middle class respectability, a street of crinolines, carriages, maids and menservants which really was cut off from the rowdy dockland area of lower High Street, just a saunter away. The first invaders of residential John Street were solicitors, some of whose firm names still exist in the street. These houses were bought when the popularity of the east end of the town began to wane. Then a few shops began to spread from the then highly prosperous High Street East into Fawcett Street and gradually into the north end of John Street – the oldest section where the Church of St Thomas and its vicarage stood.
It was between the two world wars and after World War II that this once quiet street began to get really busy. As shops were bombed or demolished in the east end they often continued their businesses in John Street. An example of this was the hardware firm of J. Strother & Son which moved into John Street from its bombed-out premises in High Street West. Joplings Department store relocated into the street in May 1956 from its High Street premises which had been completely destroyed by fire in December 1954.
Up to the beginning of World War Two, John Street was regarded as one of the finest residential streets in the town. Many of the houses were Georgian, having been built between 1820 and 1830 during the reign of George IV. In the early part of the twentieth century the wine and spirit merchants, J.W. Cameron & Co Ltd occupied nos 1, 2 and 3 John Street. The rest of this north-east block of the street was taken up by St Thomas’s Church and the verger’s house, both built in 1828.
The change in this block came in the 1940s with the destruction of the church on 14th March 1943 by a German bomb. The church was not rebuilt and the site was ripe for any new commercial enterprise to take over. This was to prove a godsend to Joplings.Numbers 1, 2 and 3 were eventually taken over by Northern Furnishing Company, a branch of Hardy Furnishing which remained there throughout the 1970s and 80s when the movement west of the commercial centre of the town away from this area brought closure to this branch of the firm. Until 1958 the west side of this block still retained one of its original Georgian properties, 66 John Street. It was demolished that year to make way for the extension to Woolworths. The pillared entrance to the building, which began its existence in 1827 was retained and installed in a doorway at the south end of the street and can still be seen today.
The hardware firm of Strothers relocated to the north west block after their large shop in High Street West was destroyed in World War Two. On the corner of this block also stood the shop of J. Risdon & So, owned by Norman Risdon, these premises having been rebuilt following the Havelock House Fire of 1898. Risdons sold just about everything for babies from shawls to top quality prams. It served Wearsiders right up to 1977 before closing. Today the premises are occupied by bookmakers. The remaining Georgian buildings in the two other blocks of John Street are now occupied by offices although with the arrival of the twenty first century one of two have had a change of use to become shops or coffee shops.
The south block once boasted two magnificent buildings at either end: Sunderland & South Shields Water Company on the corner of Borough Road and the Constitutional Club on the corner of Athenaeum Street. The Water Company property has now been renovated and become an aparthotel, known today as Hawksley House. The Constitutional Club closed in 1941 and was demolished and replaced by an office block (today occupied by McKenzies, solicitors) Nos 43 and 44 John Street were demolished and a County Court built there in 1876.
The west corner of the south block was, in the early twentieth century, occupied by the YMCA before becoming a restaurant. It was eventually purchased by H. Binns in 1929 and then demolished and rebuilt as an extension of their store.
Today Wearside shoppers still visit the street and Joplings store, now owned by Owen Owen, still serves the city although plans are afoot to change the top floor of the building into a hotel.
Woolworth's extension of 1958 had brought extra life to John Street but the downsizing of the store in the 1990s saw the extension close. This, together with the relocation of Strothers to Brumwell's premises in High Street West and the closure of Northern Furnishing and Risdons in the mid 1970s left Joplings as the dominant commercial outlet of the street. Joplings is now owned by the company and plans are being prepared to change the top floor of this store into a hotel.
Cameron's building on the north east corner of John St. The building has been altered but the top floor is still recognizable today
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