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Recession Hits City Centre Opticians
Published: Wednesday 5th October 2011

When I was in Newcastle on Monday, I was very saddened to see that a number of local independent Opticians had all closed over the last 12 months.

Friends of mine at Geoff Stevens Opticians, Hexham closed their city centre practice after a year or so, focusing instead on their local community practices in Northumberland.

I was really surprised when a very long established practice, Cyril Rowe went into administration late 2010 bringing to an end a very long history for the practice that was once at the forefront of contact lens work in Newcastle.

Cyril Rowe's client base was taken over by the newly established Tony & Guy Opticians, who have now rebranded themselves, suggesting a pull out by the Tony & Guy group.

On Monday I noticed that my ex-boss Keith Little had also chosen to close The Big Optician, his city centre practice to focus his efforts on the Byker practice instead.

These are all signs of how expensive city centre premises and rates can be, and is certainly evident when you look at the number of vacant retail premises in the city. The top of Northumberland Street with BHS & Next standing vacant is a real eyesore.

I feel very lucky to have a local, loyal community on my doorstep. Ironically our practice has grown this year again without any active marketing. Lets hope that all business owners can ride out this storm and start to see an end to the crippling recession in the North East

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Contact Lenses

Newcastle Opticians

Is your current eyecare provider giving you the service that you expect? ...or is he or she just too rushed or disinterested? Then move on & join us at Querido & Davidson.

We are a national award winning eyecare practice (established in 1956) with a long heritage of providing exemplary service and exceptional products.

Eye Tests & Examinations

Our Optometrists carry out a huge array of checks during to your eye examination. These can include testing your eye pressure (to detect glaucoma - which, if undetected, could lead to blindness), checking sideways field of vision and the health of the back of your eye.

All these checks are quick and painless, and will provide us with important information that will help monitor any slight changes over time.

Contact Lenses

We fit a huge variety of contact lenses types to patients across the whole of the UK. We supply lenses to people of all ages, & all prescription types. Using corneal topography and slit lamp image capture we provide the highest standard of care to all our contact lenses wearing patients.

We specialise in iGo OVC, Ortho-K and Paragon CRT Orthokeratology work for all ages from 6 upwards. We are an accredited Chromagen contact lens practice. We supply varifocal contact lenses and contact lenses to correct astigmatism. We can also supply theatrical contact lenses for television productions.

In 2006 we were awarded the title of Contact lens practice of the year at the UK Optician awards.

Keratoconus Eye Care

We are a keratoconus friendly practice, and are experienced in the following keratoconus management methods:

Spectacles
Soft contact lenses, including Ultravision Kerasoft and Acuity Soft K
Gas permeable contact lenses, including Rose K, So2Clear and Lensdynamics Dyna Z intralimbal
Scleral contact lenses, including Innovative Sclerals

Finding Querido & Davidison:

We are located at:
196 Chillingham Road
Heaton
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 5LN
0191 265 9898