The Mile Castle, situated on Grainger Street overlooking Central Station, is Newcastle’s largest branch of the UK pub giant, JD Wetherspoon. The three-floor pub, housed in a grade II listed building originally built as Newcastle’s savings bank in 1861, opens its doors to thousands of customers every day, serving cheap and cheerful pub grub and bargains on booze. Popular with students and weekend partygoers, the pub also boasts a live DJ, club lighting and smoke machines on Friday and Saturday nights.
The pub will become the UK's first 'Super Spoons'
On November 26th, the pub will become the UK's first 'Super Spoons' - completing the second phase of its over £5 million redevelopment. This follows the pub’s 13-week closure over summer, seeing £2.8 million’s worth of refurbishments made to the interior, including updated lighting, decor, extended bars, and even a new cellar.
Key to the pub’s ‘Super Spoons’ transformation is a new hotel, housed in the adjoining building, featuring four floors and 26 en-suite bedrooms, four being for families, and two for guests requiring accessible facilities. Becoming the 56th Wetherspoons hotel to open since the first, The Shrewsbury Hotel, in 1998, The Mile Castle is the company’s flagship branch in the North-East. A new beer garden measuring over 275 square metres, one of the largest in the country, will also open on the 26th, on the site of a former car park at the side of the building.
"It will be a great asset to the pub, as well as to the city"
Although it hasn’t been smooth sailing, with the hotel and beer garden opening two weeks behind schedule, pub manager Kris Lee said: “We are looking forward to welcoming people to the hotel and believe that it will be a great asset to the pub, as well as to the city”, adding that the beer garden will be a “great new attraction” for The Mile Castle. The project will also see a further 70 new jobs created, taking the pub’s staff number to 200.
