© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Miscellaneous

Read more about the article Confessions of an ice dealer
Handling blocks of ice at Dark's Ice Works, 1936.

Confessions of an ice dealer

RAY Kime used to be one of the biggest ice dealers in the Wallsend area. He’d buy from his supplier in Newcastle and break down the pure ice into smaller quantities for his many customers who simply couldn’t get by without it. That was before electric refrigerators, of course, when most people used iceboxes to keep their foodstuffs cold. “When fridges came in, well that was the beginning of the end for the ice home delivery business,” Ray told me. He still has his ice pick, his ice tongs and various bits and pieces of paperwork…

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Read more about the article Panorama of Newcastle, circa 1902.

Panorama of Newcastle, circa 1902.

This delightful panoramic view of Newcastle Harbour, taken from Cathedral Hill, was created between 1899 and 1907 by Charleston Studios, a prominent photographic presence in the city at the time. It has been scanned from a folding copy in an old pamphlet and the digital copy has been carefully restored by Sylvia Ray. In the front right is a portion of the since-dismantled Cathedral graveyard. Stockton shows large in the background, with the masts of the sunken ship Regent Murray (lost in 1899) poking above the waterline at the end of the Oyster Bank. The old…

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Read more about the article Newcastle’s lost map-of-the-world pool

Newcastle’s lost map-of-the-world pool

So many myths surround Newcastle’s lost and lamented Young Mariners’ Pool, with its legendary concrete map of the world. Many people believe the lost continents still lie beneath the sand, and that determined digging will reveal them in their former glory. Alas, the fact is that only some fragments of the map sections around the edge of the pool remain to be exposed from time to time. Most of the concrete map was broken up by Newcastle City Council - apparently in the 1970s - and the pieces were dumped off Nobbys breakwater to supplement the…

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