Thanks to the time of the year that we visited the grass was very green and we were afforded lovely skyscapes of blue and white, all of which made for some attractive landscape photography in the area.

Of course, no visit to a Roman fortification would be a visit without an image of a phallus. Those Romans sure did like their phalluses.

Housesteads Roman Fort was built in around 124 just after the start of the construction of the nearby Hadrian’s Wall fortifications. The garrison housed a large auxiliary infantry cohort and a detachment of legionaries from Augustus’ Second Legion; in total around 800 men. It is the most complete Roman fort in Britain.

As mentioned above a big reason for visiting the Roman fort at Housesteads was because we’d read that there was an area of Hadrian’s Wall next to it that you could actually walk on. Now, of course, there aren’t guards along the wall’s length so there’s nothing to stop people from just walking on it anyway but it’s a monument of significant historical interest that often needs repairs to maintain it so you shouldn’t. Especially if there are signs up asking people not to walk on the wall any further. Especially if you’re old enough to know better. What I’m trying to say here is that we walked on the part of Hadrian’s Wall you’re allowed to walk on and we took photos of the wall and photos of the land to the north the Romans were protecting England from. Other people – older people, keen walkers from the looks of it – carried on walking on parts they’re not supposed to. Because they’re self-entitled arses.

Some photos of our bedroom and bathroom in Rookery Hall to start with because us travelling people do like to take photos of bedrooms and bathrooms to share for some reason. As you can see: large, spacious, clean.

One thing to consider with a place like Rookery Hall, shared with nearly every hotel of this type set in an historic building with sprawling grounds, is that there’s not a lot else to see and do in the area. Once you’re at the hotel then that’s pretty much it. You might get lucky and have a village or some other point of interest in walking distance but generally-speaking your hotel arrival marks the start of doing very little else, and you might find that perfectly fine. As a result we tend to arrive at these hotels late in the afternoon so that we’ve got time to take a wander around the grounds and snap some photos then freshen up ahead of some drinks and dinner before retiring, and that’s what we did here too.

Rookery Hall was built in 1816 for William Hilton Cooke, a wealthy landowner with a sugar plantation in Jamaica. In 1867 the property was purchased by Baron William Henry von Schröder who made alterations and extended it, transforming its appearance from the a fairly plain, late-Georgian building into a chateau in a neo-Elizabethan style at the turn of the century; Rookery Hall has a fairly unique architectural heritage among country houses in the UK as a result. Von Schröder was High Sheriff of Cheshire. The building and grounds were sold but remained in private hands until 1979 when a succession of hoteliers gradually turned Rookery Hall into the place it is today, transforming rooms into bedrooms, and adding additional wings, a restaurant, and spa.

We aren’t spa people so can’t tell you anything about what the one at Rookery Hall offers other than to say that it seemed quite popular. Our short walk around the main buildings and the pond had us spotting numerous couples strolling across from the main part of the hotel to the spa area dressed in gowns. There was only the slightest air of some cult meeting and initiation ceremony taking place but, since we don’t visit spas, that might be true of all of these so-called areas of relaxations.

One thing you’re guaranteed with a Hand Picked Hotel stay is good food, whether that’s with the included breakfast or with the dinner that you might add on or may get with whatever deal you might manage to book for your stay. As keen cruisers we’d say that we can expect dinner to be about the same as speciality dining options on Princess or lines of that quality and above. We certainly had no complaints with our evening meal or the pre-dinner drinks and nibbles or the after-dinner cocktails at Rookery Hall.

We had a nice stay at Rookery Hall and it was everything we expected it to be: interesting building, great food and drink, lovely views with pleasant walking areas. The lack of anything to do in the vicinity might be a consideration for some people but if you’re after a place to stay for pure relaxation and you’re the sort of person who likes spas then this could be ideal. We certainly like these sorts of places around the country for their historic connections and fancy dining options… but… prices at these hotels have sky-rocketed over the past few years making them far less attractive for stays. At around the time we visited here, for instance, we got a room, breakfast, and dinner for less than the price of just the room and breakfast costs these days, and it’s only been a few years. That effectively adds about 50% to what we paid for the same experience now and while there may be extenuating circumstances behind that sort of rise it’s not the sort of expense we can easily justify if we’re looking for somewhere to stay that’s a bit different.

On our previous visit we’d explored a bit of Newcastle, popping into museums and looking at the old castle there on the mornings of the games, but for this year’s trip we were a bit more relaxed about things and mostly contented ourselves with some general ambling around the streets instead. This gave us a chance to really soak up the huge variety of architectural styles of buildings that had survived to the present day.

While Newcastle was a target for air raids during the second world war on account of its industrial centres, it was not hit anywhere near as bad as our home city, Portsmouth, which suffered six times as many injuries and deaths (the heaviest night of bombing in Portsmouth alone almost cost the same number of lives as Newcastle’s entire losses in the war) and the destruction of thousands of buildings. It’s always nice, therefore, when we’re travelling elsewhere in the United Kingdom, to see buildings from a wide range of historical periods and in a wide range of styles since what we might have had was mostly turned into rubble in the 1940s. Newcastle does not disappoint in this respect.

This post, then, can be considered a photowalk around Newcastle city centre on a Saturday and Sunday morning in May 2016 with some occasional information about some of the sights we saw if they have any significance or historical or architectural interest to us. You can expect to see Baroque, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Jacobean, Brutalism, and Modernism represented.

We were staying at a hotel north of Newcastle – the Holiday Inn, Gosforth Park (not the hotel we’d meant to book; a story I won’t bore you with right now; farther away from Newcastle than we’d planned on being; but fabulous staff and a very nice hotel overall) – and there was a nearby, regular bus service that ran to and from the city centre. We started our wander around Newcastle close to Eldon Square, a wide space hosting a war memorial. This memorial was unveiled in 1923 by Field Marshall Douglas Haig who knew a thing or two about war, having overseen the two million British casualties under his command in the First World War. The thing or two he knew didn’t include protecting lives.

The Pearl (formerly Pearl Assurance House, as you can see from the photo below) is a pleasing piece of brutalism dating from the 1970s. The small building next to it has some wildly contrasting plasterwork that feels like a mix between Art Nouveau and Tudor, but this decoration dates from the early 1950s. Just along from these buildings was the Laing Art Gallery that we felt compelled to pop into and take a look around; at the time this was housing an absolutely fantastic Alice in Wonderland exhibition.

A couple of nice examples of Art Deco lines in the following photos. The DEX Garage was opened in 1931 and it’s the oldest, straight-ramped multi-storey car park in the country outside London, originally sporting a turntable and elevator to take the cars to spaces. It’s sadly due for demolition at the time of writing this. The building with the faded “Northern” wording is somewhere I can’t place on a map, nor find any information for, but the design clearly dates it to around the same period.

Not far from late-thirteenth century St John The Baptist church is a monument to the engineer George Stephenson, designed by John Graham Lough, and unveiled in 1862. The main statue is of Stephenson himself while around the base of the stone sit four figures representing some achievement of Stephenson’s life.

The attractive Victorian-style theatre is the Tyne Theatre and Opera House and was opened in 1867. The wording Stoll Picture Theatre comes from its 1919 transformation into a cinema, and the first film it showed to audiences was Tarzan of the Apes. The Stoll Picture Theatre was the first cinema in Newcastle to show “talkies”. Nearby are some remnants of the old wall built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to defend the city from Scottish invaders from the north.

The conclusion of our first day of the weekend in Newcastle from a photographing the sights perspective saw us arrive at St James’ Park where the fans were gathering for the afternoon kick-off. You can see photographs of the Magic Weekend action from both days by clicking on 2016 Newcastle Magic Weekend Rugby League Photos.

The games for Sunday kicked off a little earlier so there was less chance to explore Newcastle but we still had another stroll anyway.

While Art Nouveau isn’t my favourite – a little too decorative for my simpler, cleaner tastes – there’s no denying that the Emerson Chambers building has some lovely elements of the style with some Baroque and Jacobean flairs too. I particularly like the copper corner domes and the clock faces are just fabulous on this very early twentieth century building.

The tall column in the public square area of Newcastle that we frequently found ourselves crossing through or catching sight of on our pre-match wandering is Grey’s Monument. This monument was raised in 1838 to give thanks to Earl Grey (he of the tea fame) for introducing the Great Reform Act in Parliament.

Another of many listed buildings in Newcastle, and a very attractive one too, is the Central Arcade in the Central Exchange building. This style of shopping arcade came to prominence in the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods, and Central Arcade dates from 1906.

Anyone who’s read other architectural-based posts of mine on this site will know that I am a lover of modernist and brutalist architecture. The Commercial Union Building in Newcastle is thoroughly modern, dating from 1971, built from pre-cast reinforced concrete blocks. While it can never claim to be a beautiful example of the style, most definitely preferring function over form in this instance, and perhaps jarringly so with little consideration to the surrounding aesthetic, the presence of supporting pillars in the manner of Le Corbusier‘s Five Points of Architecture is always a joy to see.

The sixteenth and seventeenth century Jacobean buildings not far from the bridges and riverside in Newcastle are former merchant houses. This part of the city had been a centre for trading since the Roman period. In 1772 the daughter of a tenant living there, Bessie Surtees, climbed down from a window in order to elope with the son of a coal merchant. They fled to Scotland and were married. In time, Surtees’ husband, John Scott, would become the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, and so the building became known as Bessie Surtees House and a plaque now commemorates her elopement.

The final bit of architecture to note, spotted on our last walk up towards the football stadium on the Sunday, is the former Newcastle Co-op building on Newgate Street. You hardly need me to tell you that this is an iconic example of Art Deco, of course. The building was opened in 1932 but the site on which it was built had formerly housed another of those Victorian and Edwardian shopping arcades dating from 1902, and during exploratory work for refurbishment in 2012 the original ornate iron piers from that arcade were rediscovered.