Food & Drink

Blackie Boy

A Groat Market pub whose site has carried the Black Boy name for more than two centuries, once home to the 18th-century Swarley's Club counted among engraver Thomas Bewick's haunts.

11 Groat Market, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1UQ

About Blackie Boy

The Blackie Boy stands on the Groat Market, on a site that has carried the Black Boy or Blackie Boy name for more than two hundred years. In the late 18th century the pub was home to Swarley's Club, a celebrated debating and drinking society named after landlord Richard Swarley, whose members included the great Newcastle wood engraver Thomas Bewick. The present building is a later rebuild, dating in its current form from the late Victorian and early 20th-century remodelling of the street, but the name and its associations reach back much further.

Today it is a lively city-centre pub in the heart of the Bigg Market drinking quarter, a short walk from Grey's Monument and the Monument Metro. It sits close to the Old George on the Cloth Market, so the two make an easy pairing for anyone tracing the oldest corners of Newcastle's pub history before moving down towards the Quayside.

Featured in These Guides

Blog posts and guides that feature Blackie Boy.

The Oldest Pubs in Newcastle City Centre

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