Alnwick set to get a flavour of Newcastle with £150,000 bar and street food scheme

Work is underway on the creation of Backyard Beach Club at The Dirty Bottles with an anticipated opening in late July.

Owner Mark Jones is hoping the mix of live entertainment, music, an outdoor bar and street food will turn it into a summer hotspot.

"It’s going to be completely different to anything we’ve seen in north Northumberland before,” he explained.

“It’s a concept which we’ve started seeing more of in Newcastle but it seems to make sense to give it a go in Alnwick.

"The increase in tourism development, especially with the opening of Lilidorei at The Alnwick Garden, is attracting thousands more people into the town.

"We’ve already seen evidence of that at The Dirty Bottles over the past year where we’ve been turning away around 100 to 150 people a day because we’re fully booked.”

The new development, made possible through the purchase of neighbouring properties, will have capacity for around 200 people.

He has teamed up with numerous creative designers, including the designer of recently opened Newcastle bar Frate, to help bring the project to life.

“It will be a similar vibe to that, something a little bit more contemporary that Alnwick doesn’t have yet, “ said Mark.

"It’s going to be based on a pop-up scheme so we might have pop-up food in the old Bari tea building which leads to the outside area with pop-up bars and other food vendors.”

He also revealed the name of the venue, Backyard Beach Club, is also ‘a tip of the hat’ to the legendary Baha Beach Club which was the go-to place on Newcastle’s Quayside in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

However, he quickly adds: "It’s a town centre location but we’ve still got to be sensible with the music because we don’t want to upset the neighbours.”

The groundworks are currently being finished before the decking and block paving is installed.

"It’s really exciting,” he said. “There is a lot of work to be done but we’re aiming for late July.”

He added: "We actually bought the building 18 months ago but it took this long to get planning permission.

“We thought about knocking it on the head until next year but we wanted to make the most of the good summer weather and the popularity of Lilidorei.”