November & December 2023 – Before planning your visit, please check our ‘Visitor Notices’ for accessibility updates and one-off changes to opening times. Click here to view.
Here, you can find gorgeous food in a glorious setting, from breakfast to afternoon tea, soups to savouries, cappuccinos to cuppas and guilt-free cakes! A team of prison leavers staffs the café, led, trained and mentored by the Oswin Project.
Freshly baked goods come from the charity’s bakery in HMP Northumberland, where trained bakers allow prisoners to learn new skills and find a new direction on release.
Upcoming alterations to opening times: Café 16 will close for Christmas at 3pm on Saturday 23 December 2023. It will reopen at 10am on Wednesday 3 January 2024.
A three-course Christmas meal is available to pre-book for early-December (excluding Sundays) in Café 16. This festive offer can be booked in advance for either lunch or an afternoon meal for just £25 per person.
Find out more| Breakfast | Breakfast sandwiches and a competitively priced full English Breakfast. |
| Lunch | A soup of the day, a range of sandwiches, toasties, paninis, pies and pastries, jacket potatoes and salad bowls are available all day. |
| Children’s Menu | A dedicated children’s menu with small bites, sandwiches, pasta, hotdogs and pizza slices. |
| Afternoon Teas | Elegant sandwiches accompanied by quiche, a variety of savoury pastries, cream scones with jam and a selection of mini cakes and traybakes. Afternoon Teas need to be booked in advance. |
| Vegan Menu | The vegan menu includes a (fully) vegan English breakfast, soup, sandwiches, toasties, jacket potatoes and salad bowls. |
Café 16 offers a range of bread and cakes (whole and traybakes) made to order, which can be picked up from the Cathedral. The team can cater for any occasion, and you can also order products via Deliveroo.
“If it wasn’t for the Oswin Project, I think I would have ended up going back to prison. When I came out of prison, I had to live in a hostel. There was all sorts of bad things going on there. Having work in Café 16 and being around good people, it keeps you on track and keeps you away from things like that. It makes all the difference.”
An Oswinner
At Café 16, you can enjoy high-quality food and drink and excellent service while helping someone turn their life around. Café 16 is named in honour of the 1916 Royal Flying corps station which previously occupied the site of HMP Northumberland.
Café 16 opened in 2021, with support from London North Eastern Railway (LNER). In this article, we spoke with Fiona Sample, Chief Executive Officer of the Oswin Project, and David Horne, Managing Director of LNER.
