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Buildings

1 Cattle Market, Hexham.

1 Cattle Market is a mid-nineteenth century building in Hexham, Northumberland. The building had previously been used as saddler’s, plumbing, and gas-fitting workshops. For over a century, however, it was home to the Pattinson family chemists.

At a glance

  • The building retains its early twentieth-century façade, including gold leaf bearing the Pattinson name.
  • As the Pattinsons also sold veterinary medicines, local farmers used a small window on the side of the building to place their orders and collect the items – a nineteenth-century drive-through!
  •  The building had also, at one point in history, been amalgamated with 2 Eastgate but the decision was made to return the buildings to their original separation.

1830 – 2021

History

The arrival of the railway in the 1830s brought wealth and prosperity to Hexham and with it, population growth. The centre of Hexham saw much change in the Victorian and Edwardian eras and, with it, new buildings of high architectural quality. Along Cattle Market are a mix of building types from the row of bank buildings on the North side to the solid two and three storey buildings on the south side c. late 18th/early 19th C.

Lewy Pattinson, a Hexham native, emigrated from England to Australia in 1881 and found success financing building projects. Lewy later established the first Pattinsons Pharmacy just outside Sydney in 1886. The shop brought Lewy further success and later became H Soul Pattinson & Co., one of Australia’s most profitable companies. After joining Lewy in his business, his brother William returned to England. William’s son John then set up the family business in 1 Cattle Market, Hexham in 1898.

1 Cattle Market had previously been a saddler’s shop so William set about converting the premises for use as a veterinary and dispensing chemist.

Cattlemarket in the 1800s.

Outside of work, William Pattinson was know as the ‘Iron Man of Tynedale’ because of his athletic talents. He was a founding member of the Hexham Bowling Club and, in 1887, helped to win the Rugby Northumberland Cup.

The pharmacy would later come to change hands in 1937. Sidney Wells, who had been working for William Pattinson throughout the 1930s, took on the pharmacy upon William’s death. John Wells, Sidney’s son then took over the business upon his own father’s death in 1978.

John and his wife Nancy, also a qualified pharmacist, worked here with her husband until he retired in 1999 and the pharmacy was taken on by Boots, the national chain of chemists.

Pattinson’s in the late 1970s.
Dunston Staiths

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