The first bridge, built by Emperor Hadrian, was a wooden superstructure supported on solid stone piers and called Pons Aelius.
Another wooden superstructure is built on the stone piers of the Pons Aeilus which had been destroyed many years ago. A 'new castle' is also built to protect the crossing.
The town wall is built from Sand Gate to Close Gate and extended along the river front. The Quayside section of the wall is pierced by a number of water gates.
In Middlebrook's 'Newcastle-upon-Tyne', he describes that in the 15th century 'the wealthy merchants lived in the Cloth market, later in the Side and the Sandhill, the Close or the Quayside; the poorer folk, in the "stairs" that climbed up from the Close or in the many narrow alleys or "chares" running down to the Quay.'
The Oat Market and the Cloth Market are held on the Quayside's Sandhill.
With a plague coming to Newcaslte, people began to leave their homes to set up imporvised quarters in St. Ann's Chapel beyond Sandgate.
Map of Newcastle, including the Quayside, from the 17th century.
'Surtees House', which still stands in Newcastle today was built near Sandhill in an area considered fashionalbe.
William Grey publishes a critical view of Newcastle's Quay. Along the Quay, he says, 'is many houses and populous all along the water side; where shipwrights, seamen and keelman most live, that are imployed about ships and keels'. He adds that that these crowded suburbs were notorious for trouble. He relates a story of a corporation who had to pay 15s. 0 1/2d. to a glazier 'for mending the windowes in the Merchants' Court, broekn by the seamen putt in there after they were prest for his majesties service'.
Henry Bourne publishes his history of Newcastle. He comments that the majority of Newcastle's 20,000 population still lived in the lower part of the town beside the river. However, the richer inhabitants has begun to move away from the Close, the Sandhill and the Quayside. The Quayside is described as a 'very narrow, dirty and inconvenient street' consisting of shops, warehouses, offices, coffee-houses and taverns.
