In a message dated 01/12/2009 05:13:41 GMT Standard Time, pnjmillington@bigpond.com writes: Hi, I have a hairdresser, James Elsdon in High Friars St, Newcastle St John, and a cordwainer, Stephen Elsdon in Back Row, Newcastle St John from 1790-1820. Does anyone know where Back Row was? I can see the modern Friars St but not Back Row on the maps. Judith Judith: If you can see a modern "Friar Street" on maps, be very cautious. There are two Friar Streets in the centre of Newcastle. The most prominent, and so most likely to get onto a map is Low Friar Street, which runs from Fenkle Street (near Charlotte Square) to Newgate Street, which it meets at the modern entertainment/leisure complex caled The Gate. Its name refers to the Friars from the Blackfriars monastery, the ruins of which are nearby. High Friar Street used to run east from the other side of Newgate Street, but further north, near the New Gate itself, and is supposed to have been the route by which the Grey Friars from their establishment on the west side of Pilgrim Street, near Pilgrim Street Gate, used to access St Andrew's church. When Blackett Street was built the eastern end of High Friar Street was merged into it, but when Anderson Place, the later embodient of what had originally been the Grey Friars Monastery, was demolished and its attached land used to build some of what is now "Grainger Town", that and of High Friar Street was recreated a few yards further south, so that it no longer lined up quite conveniently with its western end, from which it was then separated by the tops of Grey Street and Grainger Street and the imposing Grey's Monument. Now that eastern end still exists but the older, western, end was flattened c1970 by part of the Eldon Square shopping centre, inside which the shopping mall which more or less covers the same ground is officially named "High Friars" (I have yet to hear anyone actually call it that, but then I'm not the shopaholic type). Back Row was further south again and linked the bottom part of Westgate Road with St Nicholas Street. That district was competely altered in the middle of the 19th century by the building of the High Level Bridge (opened 1849) and the associated lines, embankments, etc, at which time Back Row disappeared entirely. It's eastern end was in St Nicholas Street, opposite the Black Gate, where Westgate Road now emerges, and its western end lined up with the Postern, which was more or less where Forth Street is today. That means that most of its route is now under the main London to Edinburgh railway line and will be travelled by rail travellers bound for places north of Newcastle just after they leave Newcastle Central Station. Come to think of it, that means it will also be under what was for many years billed as "the largest level crossing in the world", a complex of points between the station platforms and the Castle Keep, where the numerous lines all have branches leading across the others and onto the High Level Bridge.. Geoff Nicholson