North Shields on Screen: Film and TV Locations

North Shields does not have a castle to hire out to Hollywood, but it has something producers seem to love just as much: a working fish quay, a pair of old lighthouses, and a riverside that looks like nowhere else in England. Between a hit ITV crime drama and one of the biggest songwriters in the country, the town and its Fish Quay have earned a firm place on screen.

Vera and the Fish Quay

For many people North Shields is Vera country. The Fish Quay is the spiritual home of the ITV crime series that ran for well over a decade, with Brenda Blethyn as the rumpled, brilliant DCI Vera Stanhope. The quayside, the river and the pair of white navigation lights known as the High and Low Lights have appeared again and again as the backdrop to Vera's Northumberland.

One of the best-loved moments comes on the Fish Quay itself, where Vera and her sidekick share a mug of tea with the Low Light standing behind them. The riverside here, with its landing stages, gulls and working boats, gives the show the grounded, salt-and-diesel realism that set it apart from glossier crime dramas. The town is a regular fixture on the Vera location tours that run around the wider North East, and a walk from the Old Low Light Heritage Centre at Clifford's Fort down to the water takes you through much of the scenery viewers will recognise.

Sam Fender's North Shields

The town's other great screen export is its own son. Sam Fender grew up in North Shields, and the place runs straight through his work, most visibly in the video for his number-one single Seventeen Going Under. Filmed around the town, it uses real North Shields backdrops rather than a set: the imposing wartime housing block of Knott's Flats, the streets around Whitby Street, and Collingwood's Monument looking out over the mouth of the Tyne. The result is a video that could only have been made here, all community streets and coastal light.

We have told the fuller story of the man and his connections to the town elsewhere: see our guide to Sam Fender: North Shields' Own, including the Low Lights Tavern on the Quay where he was first discovered.

The wider North East on screen

North Shields sits within one of the most filmed stretches of coast in the country. Just up the river the Tyne itself has starred in countless productions, from the bridges in Get Carter to the opening titles of many a Geordie drama. Follow the coast north and you reach the castles and beaches that have doubled for Hogwarts and beyond, while inland the grandest settings of all belong to the region's great cathedrals and fortresses.

If the town has whetted your appetite for the North East on film, two nearby guides are worth a look: Alnwick on Screen, on the castle that became Hogwarts and Brancaster Abbey, and Durham on Screen, on the cathedral that has stood in for both a school of wizardry and the palace of Asgard.

Seeing it for yourself

The good news is that North Shields' screen locations are almost all free to wander. The Fish Quay, the High and Low Lights and the riverside are open to anyone, and the Old Low Light Heritage Centre is a fine place to start, with a cafe overlooking the river and exhibitions on the Quay's real history. The Sam Fender landmarks, from Knott's Flats to Collingwood's Monument, sit within an easy walk of the town and the coast. Take your time, look across the river, and you will spot more than you expect.