in association with, and with grateful thanks to the Newcastle upon Tyne Royal Grammar School.
COLLINGWOOD’S NEWCASTLE: The Miller Theatre, Royal Grammar School: 7.30pm Thursday 6th March 2025.
The Collingwood Society has enjoyed an association with, and the generous support of, the Newcastle upon Tyne Grammar School since the Society was founded in 2012. In particular, the annual ‘Collingwood Lecture’ has been held in the Miller Theatre every year (lockdown excepted).
This series of lectures has seen a mixture of academic and educational themes, drawing eminent speakers from across the country. The events never fail to entertain and inform the audiences.
That will absolutely be the case for the 2025 Collingwood Lecture, which will take place at 7.30pm on Thursday 6th March. Our speaker this year is the ever popular local historian, author, TV personality, ex-teacher and raconteur John Grundy. His topic is ‘Collingwood’s Newcastle’
The Collingwood Society exists to promote the life and legacy of local hero, Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood. Born on the Side in Newcastle, Collingwood attended the old Grammar School, hence the interest of the Royal Grammar School today. This before dedicating half a century of service to the Royal Navy and rising to fame for his role in the Battle of Trafalgar.
So the School, along with the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas and the streets of the old town and the Quayside, all of which would have been familiar to the young Cuthbert, will no doubt figure in this year’s talk. Likewise how the buildings and the fortunes of Newcastle changed over the years and as Collingwood returned to his beloved north-east.
And, given that this event forms part of the School’s Quincentenary Celebrations, the Society is again both honoured and grateful for the partnership and support of the School and its staff.
This will undoubtedly be an entertaining and informative evening.
Free admission to Society members and staff and pupils of the RGS. £4 admission to guests. A bar will be available.
The Royal Grammar School is located on Eskdale Terrace, just around from Jesmond Metro Station. Parking is available on adjacent streets.
John Grundy:
John Grundy was born in 1946 in Carlisle, Cumberland. He taught in north-east schools from 1970 and became a lecturer in English Literature at South Tyneside College.
He was strongly influenced by reading Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England series of architectural guides. In the late 1980s he worked for the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commision for England, before beginning a more public career as a writer and television presenter on architecture, especially that of Northern England.
He is the Chair of the Friends of Beamish.
Books: In the late 1990s Grundy edited and expanded the new edition of Pevsner’s Northumberland, in the Buildings of England series. In 2003 he published Northern Pride, which featured “the very best of northern architecture from cathedrals to chip shops”. His definitive ‘John Grundy’s History of Newcastle’ was published in 2016, followed by ‘John Grundy’s History of Northumberland’ in 2022.
Television: Between 1987 and 1996, Grundy appeared as a presenter on the BBC North East series, ‘Townscape’. He presented the popular Town Portraits which were later transmitted by BBC Two, and were amongst the first films transmitted on BBC International Satellite Television.
Grundy Goes… (1996–99) broadcast on Tyne Tees partly involved Grundy becoming the interesting historical characters found in the histories of the buildings he visited.
Grundy’s Wonders was another longer-running Tyne Tees series, in which Grundy explored architecture in the north east, as well as Cumbria and Yorkshire.
One episode of BBC Four’s Travels with Pevsner series featured Grundy visiting sites previously visited by Nikolaus Pevsner in the 1950s and 1960s.
Grundy also presented a regular series for BBC Look North called Grundy’s North, starting in 2010.
The Collingwood Society is a special-interest group whose focus is the life, times and legacy of Cuthbert Collingwood (1748-1810) Vice-Admiral of the Red,1st Baron Collingwood of Caldburne and Hethpoole in Northumberland. The Society is based in the historic Newcastle upon Tyne Trinity House, located just behind the City’s Quayside.
It runs a programme of talks and other events throughout the year, based around the ships, people, battles and stories of the wider Georgian era navy. For more information, please see https://collingwoodsociety.co.uk/
