Hotel du Vin, City Road

Image: © Andrew Curtis Taken: 28 Mar 2010

Converted in 2007-8 from the Tyne-Tees Steam Shipping Company offices of 1908 (commonly known as Allan House). Now Hotel du Vin, hotel, restaurant and bistro. A modern wing, visible to the right, was added to the rear, off Ouse Street. Newcastle's Victoria Tunnel runs beneath the hotel building. There is an entrance behind from Ouse Street http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Tunnel_%28Newcastle%29 On the left, are the modern apartments at Lime Square with the edge of the former red-brick electricity substation just in front, now converted to offices. The corner of the hotel wall on Ouse Street carries a Newcastle City Council commemorative plaque to the Craig family erected in 2009. The Craigs worked as watermen along the riverside in the mid C19th and came to be described in a newspaper of the time as 'the pluckiest family of lifesavers in the kingdom'. Between them they rescued about 25 people from drowning in the Rivers Tyne and Ouseburn. James Craig was known as the 'Ouseburn hero' and personally saved around 20 people. He carried out a double rescue in 1869 of both a 3 year old child and a man. He won a Royal Humane Society silver award in 1882 when, aged 53, he jumped 18 feett from a window in his home, and scaled two high walls, to save a man from drowning. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Tyne+heroes+to+be+honoured+at+last%3B+Group+agrees+to+have+plaque+put...-a0182020538

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