This week I visited Hayles Street, formerly Gibraltar Row. There is a late Victorian pub on the corner and one likes to feel that it is the successor of the Sign of the Castle where the inquest on Hugh Newman was held.

The street is now quite mixed with some late Victorian houses. There is also one terrace of brick houses on the west side called “Hayles Terrace” and dated 1853. Further down on the same side are some very plain brick houses which could date from around 1816 or any time up to the 1850s. In my opinion this could be the original Gibraltar Row as it is a single row of modest dwellings and therefore the earliest houses in the street. They could date from a few decades later but it would be unlikely that the earlier houses should be pulled down in the 1840s or 1850s only to be replaced by something almost identical. At the north end of this row is a recess called Fives Court (visible by the lamp post and blue sign on the wall in both photos), which leads into a serpentine passageway (with some old brick walls) which leads directly in East Place, West Square where we know that Hugh Newman’s nephew, Samuel Hugh Newman was living 1838-184. Knowing that the Newmans usually lived in very close proximity to one another, I think this is another confirmation that these houses constitute at least part of the original Gibraltar Row.

The fact that the Leedle household was at 24, Gibraltar Row suggests there were more houses than at present but I would venture the opinion that the ones in my photograph are from the original row, so that we can know what sort of house No. 24 would have been, even if we can no longer identify it (the numbers having been changed to accommodate the new houses).

Sometime it might be worth checking the 1841 & 1851 Census to see if one can ascertain anything about the increase in the number of houses in this decade.

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