‘We’ve had a dead dog in our Tynemouth Pub wall for decades’

For 145 years, people’s curiosities have been piqued by a taxidermy dog on proud display in the wall of a pub.

The Turks Head in Tynemouth, North Tyneside, is often referred to as “The Stuffed Dog” because of Wandering Willie, the sheepdog that has stewarded the venue for decades.

The story goes, general manager Nigel Meadows says, that Willie was sent to gather his travelling shepherd’s flock, but was left behind when the shepherd, realising all the sheep were accounted for, left thinking the dog would catch up.

Willie was taken in by a local ferry master and became a beloved figure by herding passengers ashore before his death in 1880, when he was then “stuffed and mounted” at the pub.

Mr Meadows said: “Everybody knows that this is the pub with the dead dog in the wall.”

He started working at the pub about 17 years ago, collecting glasses.

“You start, thinking it is a little bit weird that we have a dead dog in the wall, but then absolutely everyone who works here becomes utterly obsessed with him,” the general manager said.

“He’s our dog.”

It is thought that, in 1873, Willie and his master were driving a flock of sheep to market through South Shields when the animals were startled by the noise and industry of the town and scattered in all directions.

When the sheepdog returned to the marketplace, he found the shepherd had moved on without him.

Willie remained at the marketplace, waiting for his master to return, “growling and snapping at any person who tried to help or feed him, living only off scraps he foraged nearby,” Mr Meadows said.

“So one of the ferry masters decided that – since it was Victorian England – a kindness would be to take Willie on to a ferry and throw him in the River Tyne, to put him out of his misery.”

But Willie swam ashore and came back with a “whole new lease of life”, Mr Meadows said.

“Willie became reinvigorated, and was adopted by another of the ferry masters of the Tyne, sailing back and forth every day, barking happily and herding passengers and schoolchildren ashore.”

Willie disappeared from his box for a short time late last year for a clean and check-up by a Newcastle-based taxidermy specialist.

Mr Meadows said the sheepdog did not have a smell.

“Everyone’s surprised by that,” he said. “He’s remarkably well-preserved.”

He said that for the first 100 years or so, Willie did not have a glass pane in front of him, so the sheepdog had just “adopted the smell of the pub over the years”.

Mr Meadows said Wandering Willie had become “well known across the world”.

He said locals had been as far away as Canada and were asked: “Oh, do you come from Tynemouth? Do you know the pub with the dead dog in it?”

“It’s something everybody in Tynemouth knows,” he said.