Newcastle Breweries Blue Star Monument

Some monuments commemorate great battles. Others celebrate people who changed the world. This one has a big blue star on it and commemorates beer. Finally, a subject where I might stand a chance of understanding the information board.

You'll find the Newcastle Breweries monument in Blue Star Square, outside The Core building at Newcastle Helix, just off Bath Lane. If you remember the enormous brewery near St James' Park, this is the area it once occupied. If you don't, ask someone older. They'll explain it, then tell you how much a pint used to cost.

The square forms part of the redevelopment of the old Tyne Brewery site, but the monument incorporates stonework rescued from the brewery. The brewery has gone, but at least someone remembered to keep the badge.

The monument includes the original foundation stone from John Barras's brewery, established in Gateshead in 1770. The business moved across the Tyne in 1884 to take over the Tyne Brewery here in Newcastle, hence the inscription 'Removed from Gateshead'.

In 1890, John Barras and Company joined with other breweries to form Newcastle Breweries, the name shown above the blue star. A merger with Scottish Brewers in 1960 created Scottish and Newcastle Breweries.

That is quite a lot of company names to get through before we've even opened a bottle.

The brewery's most famous product arrived in 1927, when Newcastle Brown Ale was introduced. Created by Lieutenant Colonel James Herbert Porter, it went on to become one of the city's most recognisable exports.

The brewery also became firmly associated with Newcastle United through its shirt sponsorship. Newcastle Breweries appeared on the shirts from 1980, and the blue star and later Newcastle Brown Ale branding became part of some of the club's most iconic kits. For plenty of supporters, those black and white shirts with the Brown Ale badge bring back memories of Kevin Keegan's Entertainers.

For decades, Newcastle Brown Ale was brewed here within easy reach of St James' Park. Then, in May 2005, the Tyne Brewery closed and brewing transferred across the river to the Federation Brewery at Dunston.

Thankfully, the stonework was saved before the bulldozers arrived. It had previously been built into the brewery's accommodation building, but by 2006 it had been removed and placed in storage. Demolition of the brewery began in March 2007.

The site eventually became the science and business development now known as Newcastle Helix, previously Science Central. The saved stonework was brought back to the former brewery site and erected as the monument in Blue Star Square, where photographs show it standing by January 2015.

It's a small survivor from a much larger piece of Newcastle's industrial history. Without it, you could walk through the modern development without realising that the ground beneath your feet once helped power a lot of questionable decisions in the Bigg Market.

And I've still got a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale from United's 1992-93 promotion season sitting on my shelf. I daren't open it. It looks like treacle, and I'm not sure whether I'd need to drink it or spread it on toast.

So if you're passing Bath Lane, have a wander over and give the monument a look. There's no brewery tour and nobody hands you a pint at the end. I mention this purely to manage expectations.

Mine would otherwise be dangerously high.