In a message dated 12/12/2009 16:23:03 GMT Standard Time, microgott@hotmail.com writes: My husband proposed to me in the Crown Posada where I have also never been for years so I think a shandy crawl to our old haunts may be coming up at Christmas.....Bet the Newcastle Arms under the Bridge which does have a new name doesn't do plate mince pies any more. The Crown Posada is another of the old standards of Newcastle pubs. I'm glad to say it still survives - it still has that little "snug" just as you go in, and its stained glass windows featured in a book on the subject a couple of years or so ago. A place like that deserves to have something stronger than shandy consumed in it, however! It usually has a range of real- and non-local ales available, which adds to its interest. I'm always fascinated by the subtle curve of its long, thin, room. It's obviously built on a single burgage tenement, but why the curve? It may be because of the shape of the hillside behind it, leading up to the Castle, but it looks rather like the shape of a piece of rig-and-furrow in an old open field. If the latter, then its shape pre-dates any buildings ever being there and takes us back to the days before the arrival of the Normans, when The Side may have been a country lane, winding among the open fields of ..... where? Monkchester? Bede's Ad Murum? a village of unknown name surviving very nearby in the remains of Pons Aelius? I always find myself pondering this whenever I'm carrying a pint or few up the curved room from the bar, wondering whether I'm following in the footsteps of some Anglian ploughman, or just those of centuries of Newcastle drinkers. It's been years since I was in the (former) Newcastle Arms but I've been told that it's nothing like it was in our day! What's new? Geoff Nicholson