The puzzle of the Elephant Tea Rooms

Elephants, seals and a jackdaw – it’s a story line-up you don’t see every day on Wearside.

But they all made the Echo headlines in the early 1980s and Chris Cordner explains why.

Craftsmen had a ticklish problem to solve before they could begin restoring the Oriental glory of a historic Sunderland building.

There was a question to answer in 1980. Did the elephants – high up on the building at the corner of Fawcett Street and High Street West – have their trunks raised or lowered?’

These had been knocked off over the years, but eventually old letter heads sent to the Echo by a reader proved that the trunks were raised.

Once that problem was solved, ornamental mason John Edwards got busy performing “plastic surgery.”

His work was not only on the elephants but also on the array of exotic birds and gargoyles which adorn the towered and turreted frontage of what in 1980 was Williams and Glyn’s Bank, but was also known as the Elephant Tea Rooms.

And as noses and wings were replaced, other men were at work removing the dingy coat of cream paint from the outside of the building and restoring the original terracotta brickwork.

On the elephants’ backs were packs of tea and there are also inscribed tea casks.

Let’s stay on an animal theme for more stories from Wearside in the early 1980s.

The livelihoods of North East fishermen were being threatened by herds of seals which were attacking their nets 43 years ago.

The marauding seals were tearing net and fishermen working from Sunderland were being forced further out to sea.

One fisherman from Roker said he was losing fish worth thousands of pounds in the raids.

Paper delivery boy Michael Woodward got more than he bargained for on his early morning round when he was followed all the way home by a jackdaw.

Michael, 13, was doing his usual paper round in Parkside, East Herrington, when he saw the jackdaw sitting on the fence.

It jumped on his hand and went to live in his house in 1981.

“It eats absolutely anything, ” said Michael, a pupil at Farringdon School. “We have fed it bread, biscuits, and even dog food.”

But Michael realised it was a temporary friendship and the jackdaw had to be found a new home.

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