Squeezed around Grey’s Monument, clinging to ledges and every vantage point… THIS is what it means to Newcastle when they bring the cup home

Newcastle United’s Carabao Cup-winning heroes will parade the trophy through the city’s streets before presenting it at a party on the Town Moor on Saturday. Here, we go back to 1952 to capture what a cup win means to Tyneside, and the feeling then was as strong as it is today…

Balanced but precariously so, given her grip on the curved Georgian architecture of the pub from which she has climbed through a first-floor window, a Geordie lass, most likely, has the best ledge in the street as Newcastle United’s FA Cup winners roll unhurriedly through the crowds below.

She dare not return the wave of star player Jackie Milburn and captain Joe Harvey on board the first of three buses, for fear of an unceremonious date with the pavements of Grey Street. Her friend is more audacious, raising an arm in salute of the Cup heroes, adopting the wide-legged stance of a heavyweight boxer to safeguard against the fall.

In the shadow of the 134ft-high Grey’s Monument – built in 1838 in honour of Northumberland-born Prime Minister Charles Grey – and all around the buses provided by the aptly named United Automobile Services, there are necks tilted, children on shoulders, wooden rattles and black-and-white scarves in the fullest of swings.

The overcoats are unseasonal and a weather report records ‘overcast’, but the mood is evidently radiant.

This is Monday, May 5, 1952, and shortly before 7pm. Forty-eight hours earlier, and 300 miles south at Wembley, Newcastle had lifted what would be the second of three FA Cups in five years. There were 100,000 in attendance to see Chilean forward George Robledo score the only goal versus Arsenal.

Newcastle captain Joe Harvey lifts the 1952 FA Cup after beating Arsenal 1-0

Newcastle’s players celebrate their cup win at the Savoy Hotel in London

Here, at the beating heart of Newcastle’s city centre, there are a quarter of a million happy souls, so goes the headline on the front page of the following morning’s Journal and North Mail – ‘250,000 Halt City in Great Welcome’.

It is with good reason Prime Minister William Gladstone labelled Grey Street this country’s finest. The passage of time may have eroded masonry, but not charm.

I returned to the exact spot from where our photograph was taken. The stone ledge upon which our heroine clambered is still there, no more than one foot deep. So, too, is the groove into which she dug her fingernails. Who was she?

At Newcastle’s Central Library, I find in the archives the words of a lady named only as Eliza. ‘My husband worked in the bank in Grey Street, and we stood in the bank looking out at Joe Harvey and the team holding the Cup.’ To the top right of the picture, there is that bank, Lloyds, which it remains today. Maybe Eliza is in shot?

Further research reveals that the pub above which the women are perched is The Grapes Vaults, now a block of HSBC cash machines.

But not only were those ladies brave in edging through the Victorian sash window, they were bold in walking through the front door in the first place. The pub was the last ‘men only’ bar in Newcastle before its closure in the 80s. They never did install a women’s toilet.

Next door is Mawson, Swan & Morgan. The iconic stationary store traded for more than 100 years before closing in 1986. It is now upmarket clothes outlet End.

A friend suggests I speak to a gentleman named Bob Richardson. He is 92 years old and lived in Newcastle in the 50s. I call a landline and, when he answers, I explain the scene of our picture.

Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill presents the cup to Harvey

Churchill being introduced to the Arsenal team pre-match by their captain Joe Mercer

The Newcastle players raise a glass to celebrate what was the second of three FA Cups in five seasons

‘I remember that day,’ he begins. ’I was 21 and a commerce student at Newcastle University. You see the stationary store, I used to buy my pads, pencils and textbooks in there.

‘But I couldn’t afford Wembley. I left the university library and waited for the parade at Haymarket. I remember the exuberance of the crowd. We were just coming out of the war years. There was a feeling that football was exciting, it brought real camaraderie.

‘I stood in the same spot a few months earlier when George VI died. The whole city seemed to come out and pay their respects. The cup parade was the same, only a far happier occasion.’

The buses, interestingly, were not ‘open-top’, and explains why three were needed. Rather, the ‘Bristol’ model had a sunroof with a platform assembled inside for players to stand on. As they journeyed through town and up to St James’ Park, where 45,000 fans and a brass band waited, they passed another young couple on Barrack Road. My wife’s grandmother, Joan Caddle, stood amid the crowds outside Newcastle Brewery.

‘I only remember it as 1952 because we got married that summer and Jackie and I were courting when we went to see the Cup come home,’ says Joan. ‘I never was a football fan, but I recall that moment so clearly. The bus coming past, the excitement.’

Back at the library, The Journal makes for fascinating reading. Their reporter was on the bus.

‘On Grey Street, all of Newcastle seems to be running after us,’ he writes. ‘The Cup has changed hands and now local idol Tommy Walker has it. Every few seconds he bends over the side and allows fans to touch it.

‘One man has three children on his shoulders, one on top of the other. All are waving frantically, and he can barely keep his feet. The ticker tape is like snow, and the waving like a thousand weddings all in one. Frank Brennan blows kisses to the crowd. Tommy Walker stumbles and falls, but he’s unhurt.’

The winning goalscorer in 1952, Chilean striker George Robledo – the first South American to play in an FA Cup final

And this year’s main man Alexander Isak scores the all-important goal at Wembley to put Newcastle 2-0 up against Liverpool

Newcastle fans will line the streets on Saturday to celebrate with their Carabao Cup-winning heroes

That same day’s edition of the Evening Chronicle – the rival newspaper and published later – does not carry the parade on its front page. I worked there 50 years later and the mantra remained the same, ‘If The Journal had it first, find something different’. 

And there is the alternative, the story of a nine-year-old boy ‘feared abducted in last night’s crowds watching the homecoming’. Thankfully, William Douglas was found ‘crying in a ditch’ after becoming lost. He had a ‘black-and-white favour on the lapel of his overcoat’.

In the classifieds, competing cinemas – Ritz, Olympia, Coliseum – advertise a rerun of The Cup Final. At the Theatre Royal, next door to Lloyds Bank, a performance of The Gang Show paid tribute to Newcastle’s players just one hour after the buses had passed by its majestic Pantheon-styled frontage. In other news, and tucked away, skipper Harvey will appear as a prosecution witness in a £350 Cup Final ticket-fraud hearing later that week.

Meanwhile, back on modern-day Grey Street, shoppers hurry in and out of the Metro station where the old road once ran. You can only hope, if not still among us somewhere, that our heroine on the ledge will be watching on from an even greater vantage this weekend.