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By the mid-nineteenth century, Newcastle's centre of balance had shifted away from the river, uphill to the rapidly expanding Victorian town. In a few short years, businessmen-builders and architects like Richard Grainger, Thomas Oliver and John Dobson fashioned the best-designed Victorian town in England, with classical facades of stone lining splendid new streets, most notably Grey Street - "that descending, subtle curve", as John Betjeman described it. The street takes its name from the Northumberland dynasty of political heavyweights whose most illustrious member was the second Earl Grey, prime minister from 1830 to 1834. In the middle of his term of office he carried the Reform Bill through parliament, an act commemorated by Grey's Monument at the top of the street. Grey Street still shows off much of its Victorian elegance, best exemplified by the Theatre Royal , halfway down, and the nearby Grainger Market (Mon-Sat 8am-5pm), Europe's largest undercover market when built in the 1830s, also maintains its style. West of here, behind Gallowgate, is the most complete stretch of the old city walls , leading down to Westgate Road. Once encircling the whole of medieval Newcastle, they remained in place until the sixteenth century, after which time many sections were plundered for building stone. Several towers remained in use by the city guilds as meeting houses and one, the Morden Tower , alongside Stowell Street, gained more recent prestige as the haunt of poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Basil Bunting and Tom Pickard. Through the arch, the outer defensive ditch has been restored. Stowell Street, incidentally, is Newcastle's small Chinatown . Across Stowell Street from the tower, at Friar's Green, is the tranquil courtyard of Blackfriars , a thirteenth-century stone monastery with ruined cloistered grounds, now lovingly restored to house a crafts centre and a cafe/restaurant.
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