The Sunderland fair where you can buy rare Christmas gifts this Saturday - and all with a link to the past

Get along to the Sunderland Antiquarian Society’s Heritage Centre in Douro Terrace this Saturday where there will be new, old, rare and extremely rare books for sale.

You can also buy, calendars, CDs and DVDs and if that’s not enough, you can enjoy a tombola and craft stall.

Tea and coffee will be served and the fun starts at 9.30am. It lasts until 1.30pm.

The society is now in its 122nd year and has more than 1,300 members. Each month, they get to enjoy a fact-filled newsletter about Wearside’s past, containing features such as this one about Christmas in Sunderland in 1875.

Society secretary Philip Curtis told us: “In the motorless, pre-telly, pre-computer Christmas period of 1875 the 106,000 inhabitants of Sunderland got their entertainment where they could find it. Surprisingly, there was an impressively wide choice on their very doorsteps.”

The Lyceum Amphitheatre opened as a circus while Edmund’s Managerie provided a rival attraction in Stockton Road.

“There was no pantomime but the New Wear Music Hall in Drury Lane, – “the largest and most magnificent hall in Europe with accommodation for 4000 persons” – advertised a series of original and colossal pictures of the Arctic regions.

Patrons were invited to see a “work of art beyond belief” to music by The Wear Champion Double Band.

The Royal Lyceum in Lambton Street offered variety at prices ranging from 6d in the pit stalls to 2/- for private boxes, while the Theatre Royal in Bedford

Street presented a blood-curdling melodrama entitled Blue Beard.

On Christmas Day, it held a Grand Operatic Concert but only after church services were over.

Other attractions in the town were penny readings at the Workmen’s Hall in Monkwearmouth and the Corporation Free Library in the new Arcade.

A Christmas show of fat cattle was held in the town for the first time. It started in the yard of the Three Crowns Hotel in High Street but the entries were so good that it was transferred to the Garrison grounds in Castle Street (see left).

The poor of the town were given the gift of a coal ration and 300 residents of the workhouse were given a Christmas dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, followed by tobacco and snuff.

Nuts, oranges and apples were given out by members of the Tatham Street Chapel Choir and then they entertained everyone with popular songs.

This Saturday’s Christmas fair is only one of the society’s attractions.

It also welcomes people to its Heritage Centre in Douro Terrace every Wednesday and Saturday, from 9.30am to 12pm.

The Antiquarian Society, which was founded in 1900, holds extensive archives which were amassed and donated by the people of Sunderland.

It also holds monthly illustrated talks on topics which have included Emmeline Pankhurst’s visit to Wearside, the Sunderland regiment which helped to inspire a famous film, and the famous houses of the city.

Visit the Sunderland Antiquarian Society’s Facebook page or its website at http://www.sunderland-antiquarians.org to find out more.

And email [email protected] to apply to become a member.