50-52 Brunswick Street, Yemeni Boarding House

This building was added to the South Tyneside local list in 2023. The local list description reads:
'The original houses date from at least 1856. The building itself appears to have been used for accommodation for police constables, and the yard used to host prison cells. After that, it became the last Arab boarding house in the area.
There have been Arab boarding houses in South Shields since 1894. South Shields had one of the largest Yemeni communities in the country and the majority of them were merchant seamen. An estimated 700 Yemeni sailors from South Shields lost their lives in World War One. In 1920 there were at least 8 Arab boarding houses. Ahmed Ali Hussein opened this boarding house in 1945.The boarding house would offer the seamen assistance in securing their next ship, money if the men ran out and advice if they needed any kind of help. The boarding house was still used by Yemeni men until the 2000 as a place to meet, eat, play cards and dominoes, it played a vital role in keeping the Yemeni community together.
It has appeared in several books including 'From Taiz to Tyneside' by Richard Lawless and "The Last Of The Dictionary Men" by Mathew Kipling, Tina Gharavi, and Youssef Nabil. It was the topic of a short film by Tom Mcgorrian shown on BBC in 1992. Peter Fryer and David Campbell produced a documentary called "The Boarding House" based on this boarding house in 2009.
It is the last of the Arab boarding houses and it is still in use as a boarding house, but these are now largely Indian marine students.'