Edited by Steven Oliver, Friday 8 May 2026 at 17:13
To be honest the grey skies in the picture below soon cleared - and we spent a sunny few hours on a university 'post-offer day' in Newcastle recently.
It was a chance to capture Charles, the second Earl Grey (1764-1845), high on his pedestal admiring the view down his eponymous Grey Street.
The monument went up in 1838 to celebrate a Northumbrian Whig Prime Minister, and his role specifically in the passing of the 'Great' Reform Act which was, (as the inscription says), 'after an arduous and protracted struggle safely and triumphantly achieved in the year 1832'.
Grey's administration would also pass an act to abolish slavery in 1833, and it was hard not to see how similar this monument is to that raised to William Wilberforce in Hull. (It was nice to discover that both had been considered an obstruction to urban traffic - although only Wilberforce had the indignity of being relocated 😀)
a Grey day in the Toon
To be honest the grey skies in the picture below soon cleared - and we spent a sunny few hours on a university 'post-offer day' in Newcastle recently.
It was a chance to capture Charles, the second Earl Grey (1764-1845), high on his pedestal admiring the view down his eponymous Grey Street.
The monument went up in 1838 to celebrate a Northumbrian Whig Prime Minister, and his role specifically in the passing of the 'Great' Reform Act which was, (as the inscription says), 'after an arduous and protracted struggle safely and triumphantly achieved in the year 1832'.
Grey's administration would also pass an act to abolish slavery in 1833, and it was hard not to see how similar this monument is to that raised to William Wilberforce in Hull. (It was nice to discover that both had been considered an obstruction to urban traffic - although only Wilberforce had the indignity of being relocated 😀)