This book, written by the Newcastle antiquarian John Brand, covers the history of the town from its establishment as a Roman fortification on Hadrian's Wall through to the mid-eighteenth century. Eighteenth-century Newcastle was one of several towns in Britain undergoing immense change due to technological advances in agriculture and industry and Brand's account provides a useful insight into how the town appeared at this time.

Brand was an avid collector of information and his works often suffered from a lack of focus and were criticised as being dull. This history follows the pattern, despite basing much of it on the posthumous history of Henry Bourne, published in 1736 (see RCIN 1140133), Brand criticised his predecessor and included much superfluous material that made the work appear muddled and rambling.

However, the history contains several interesting plates depicting important buildings and street scenes in the town and also contains a map by the engraver Ralph Beilby, which details the street plan in 1788. Beilby’s map was essentially a reduced copy of a 1770 map of Newcastle by the mathematician Charles Hutton and the surveyor John Fryer but he updated the plan by adding the recently constructed Mosley Street and Dean Street and their grand new public buildings as well as including some buildings that were yet to be completed.

Despite its flaws, the history and map described a Newcastle celebrating the beginning of its Georgian transformation and showcased the increasing prosperity and self-confidence of the town. Such developments continued in the early nineteenth century, and, with the construction of the Grainger Town in the 1830s and arrival of the railways the following decade, by the middle of the century, very little of the medieval town described in Brand’s history remained.