Neville Hall And Wood Memorial Hall

Neville Hall and Wood Memorial Hall

This is a significant Victorian institutional building on Westgate Road in Newcastle upon Tyne, built between 1869 and 1872 by architect Archibald M. Dunn for the Coal Owners' Association on behalf of the North of England Institute of Mining Engineers. The lecture theatre interior was remodelled in 1902 by Cackett and Burns Dick.

The building is constructed in polychrome sandstone with Shap granite columns at the entrance, topped by a slate roof. It is designed in Gothic style and comprises three storeys. The Westgate Road elevation has 5 bays with a further bay at the right corner containing 3 windows. The return to Orchard Street displays 4 bays and a fifth wide gable. A decorated sill band on the Orchard Street elevation commemorates the 'North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, erected AD 1870'.

The entrance features corner steps leading to a panelled door with side and overlights, set within a projecting canted ground-floor section. Above this sits a corbelled-out oriel containing lancet windows and a carved female figure. The ground floor displays shouldered mullioned-and-transomed windows with carved coats of arms above them. The first floor windows are topped by cusped two-centred arches, except those in the second and third bays which are square-headed and incorporate a stone balcony. Buttresses define the bays and support shafts up to a Lombard frieze above the first floor. The third-floor windows project into half-dormers with cusped heads beneath gables flanked by plinth blocks which originally held griffins, now removed. The building features an octagonal corner turret with a steeply-pitched roof, truncated chimneys, and a Neville symbol finial.

The interior contains high-quality architectural work. The entrance opens onto a broad staircase hall with a closed-string open-well stair featuring a heavy turned baluster balustrade and massive newels. Original doors are retained, including double doors to the ground-floor lecture theatre with half-panelling under segmental heads, installed in 1902.

The lecture theatre has seating arranged in a near-semicircle with dado panelling and a rear dado screen. Commemorations to past presidents appear in the side wall panelling. The cornice features egg and dart moulding, with mouldings continuing into an arched entrance terminating in Ionic capitals adorned with lions, and a compartmented ceiling. Adjacent is a jack-arched fireproof bookstore with built-in glazed cabinets and shelving. A rear bookstore is a later structure with iron galleries.

The upper floors contain the Wood Memorial Hall, the Institute's library, which occupies a double-height space with galleries on two sides across five bays. Stained glass windows at each end commemorate Nicholas Wood of Hetton, the first President of the Institute, who died on 19 December 1865. A stone statue of Wood in a canopied surround dominates the library. The library is entered from the centre of the opposite side, flanked by stone fireplaces. The roof is barrel-vaulted with a skylight supported on short paired stone columns with capitals. A heavy modillion cornice with stencilled frieze runs above. Round-arched arcades between the columns were intended for busts; currently only John Buddle and Thomas Emerson Forster are commemorated. The walls below are panelled and display the names of past presidents. Cast-iron balconies with spiral stairs occupy each end.

The front elevation features a dwarf wall with chamfered coping supporting cast-iron area railings.

The building commemorates Newcastle's former pre-eminence in coal mining and the coal trade. It houses the world's most significant mining library and associated primary material.