Discover the humble birthplace of great railway pioneer, George Stephenson, whose entire family lived in just one room. Our costumed guide tells the story of how challenging life was for mining families, like George’s, that once crammed into this now charming little stone cottage, nestled in a pretty garden near the river Tyne.

The Shipley Art Gallery is the North East’s leading gallery of craft and design. The Shipley houses one of the most important collections of contemporary British craft, along with fine collections of design and paintings.

The Laing Art Gallery is home to an important collection of fine and decorative art. Our permanent collection and temporary exhibitions feature historic and contemporary art from internationally renowned artists.

The remains of a medieval castle crucial to Anglo-Scottish warfare, superseded by the most complete and breathtakingly impressive bastioned town defences in England, mainly Elizabethan but updated in the 17th and 18th centuries. Surrounding the whole historic town, their entire circuit can be walked.

The church was built in the 1840s to a neo-Gothic design by architect August Welby Pugin, famous for his work on the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. It was paid for by halfpenny donations from the poorest community of immigrants on Tyneside, and was enhanced in the following decades by bequests from the Dunn family: the Dunns are remembered in several windows.