The historical Punch Bowl pub on Jesmond Road is set to reopen on Wednesday, July 17th after receiving a £1m revamp from the company Frank&Bird.

Led by managing director Dave Carr and his award-winning company responsible for the Brandling Villa in Gosforth, the century-old building has been transformed into a Soviet-era Russian themed pub.

At opening, The Punch Bowl will serve 36 different kinds of wine and beer in the lounge and bar of the ground floor.

The main pub on the ground floor, will also be home to a vermouth bar, where customers can drink and eat locally-supplied cheese and meat.

The pub will also play music dating back to the 1970s from the likes of The Beatles and Neil Young. The music will be played on vinyl.

On the other side of the ground floor, a dog-friendly lounge area will welcome families.

This area is not only family friendly but also has dog-friendly features, including seats for animals, and a animal-focused food and drinks menu.

In the bar of the lounge, there is also a craft-beer style enomatic wine dispensing system that will provide adult costumers a chance to taste a wide variety of wine from all over the world in any size of their choosing.

This system takes all the oxygen out of the wine and seals it for preservation.

The Punch Bowl is only the third place in Newcastle to use this system, after Fenwick Food Hall and Gosforth’s Carruthers and Kent.

Manager Carr told JesmondLocal: “It’s not a craft beer pub. It’s not a soulless beer bar, there’s no cocktails. We are going really old school but we are making sure that it’s the most kind of up and edge cool stuff you can get.”

Going up the stairs, there is a newly-refurbished venue called Bobiks, ran separately from the pub. Named after the famous Soviet space dog that ran away before its flight, it will provide as a space for cinema screenings and music and comedy performances.

There are currently more than 30 musical performances lined up with the first one being local legend Nev Clay performing at 7:30pm on launch night. Tickets for its opening performance are available here.

The venue would also function as a pay as you feel cinema with proceedings of the screening going to local charities. For its first three months, all donations will go to Maggies, the local cancer care charity operating at the Freeman Hospital.

The director said he’s also looking into plans for the cinema in the future to help communal projects in tackling local issues.

“That’s what the pubs used to be,” he said. “It used to be the heart of the community thing where you would meet your potential wife or husband, charities or if there’s a problem in the community these guys would all pull together in that townhall mentality.”

The Punch Bowl Hotel will reopen on this Wednesday, 17^th of July at 6:30pm. For more information visit their Facebook page.