The History of North Shields' High Street

North Shields does not have a single grand high street so much as a town centre that climbed, over 800 years, from the water's edge to the bank above. Its shopping streets carry that whole story, from a medieval fishing beach to an ambitious Georgian new town and the busy Victorian shopping parades that followed. Here is a short history of how the heart of North Shields took shape.

From the shiels on the riverside

The town was founded in 1225, when the Prior of Tynemouth created a fishing port on the Tyne to supply his priory with fish. Fishermen threw up rough huts, or "shiels", where the Pow Burn met the river, and it is from these that the town takes its name. Hemmed onto a narrow strip of land beneath a steep bank, the early settlement clustered along what is now the Low Street. This riverside was the town's first marketplace, long known as the Bull Ring, a name traditionally said to come from bull-baiting held there in the 17th century. Newcastle's merchants, jealous of their trade, spent centuries trying to hold Shields back, yet by 1292 the town already had around a hundred houses.

The Georgian new town on the bank

As the riverside grew overcrowded, the town began to climb. Dockwray Square was laid out in 1763, a handsome square of townhouses for shipowners and prosperous families, though poor water and drainage meant the wealthy soon drifted away. The higher ground was owned by the Howard family, the Earls of Carlisle, which is why the grandest street bears the name Howard Street. In 1796 the Earl sold his land to the developer John Wright, who planned a sweeping processional route up Howard Street to a fine new square.

That square, Northumberland Square, proved the great success of the scheme. Built around a tree-lined communal garden, it still keeps its Georgian and Regency houses on three sides and is one of the very few surviving Georgian squares on Tyneside, protected as a conservation area since 1975. Remarkably, North Shields laid out this planned town some 25 years before Newcastle's celebrated Grainger Town.

The Victorian shopping streets

The 19th century gave North Shields its civic and commercial heart. The Town Hall on the corner of Howard and Saville Streets was designed by the great Newcastle architect John Dobson in 1844, and still stands, Grade II listed. Close by, the Exchange of 1856 and the Mechanics' Institute and Free Library of 1857 gave Howard Street a dignified public face.

For shopping, though, it was Saville Street and Bedford Street that mattered. These were the prime Victorian and Edwardian parades, reached by tram from the ferry landing, their windows lit and busy well into Saturday night. Bedford Street remains the main shopping street of North Shields to this day.

Decline, redevelopment and revival

Like many industrial towns, North Shields was hit hard by the loss of its shipyards and fishing trade, and the 1960s and 70s brought heavy redevelopment to the centre. One curious survivor of that era is the town library of 1973, built on rubber springs above the Metro tunnel so that passing trains would not shake the shelves. In recent years attention has turned back to the town's older fabric, with major schemes to revive the Howard Street and Northumberland Square conservation area and reconnect it to Bedford Street, celebrating the Georgian townscape that makes North Shields so distinctive.

More North Shields history

For more of the town's story, see our guides to the interesting facts about North Shields, the North Shields heritage trail and the lost buildings of North Shields.

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