Heaton on Screen: Film and TV Locations

Heaton sits between the East End estates of Byker and the creative Ouseburn valley, a stretch of Newcastle with a long and varied screen history. This corner of the city gave the nation one of its most fondly remembered children's dramas and has since become a favourite backdrop for filmmakers drawn to the Tyne, its bridges and its warehouses.

Byker Grove: the show that launched Ant and Dec

For a generation growing up in the 1990s, the East End of Newcastle meant one thing: Byker Grove. The BBC children's drama ran from 1989 to 2006, following the ups and downs of teenagers at a fictional youth club. It is best remembered as the launch pad for two Newcastle lads, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, who played PJ and Duncan before going on to pop success as PJ & Duncan and then a television career as Ant and Dec.

Despite the name, the series was not filmed in Byker itself. The youth club scenes were shot at Benwell Towers, a Grade II listed Victorian mansion in Benwell in the west of the city, which by then was known locally as The Mitre. The real Byker did feature, however, with the estate's famous Byker Wall and Metro station used for exterior backdrops. The show came to an end in 2006 after seventeen series, and Benwell Towers has since passed to other uses, but its place in Tyneside television history is secure.

Newcastle on film

Long before Byker Grove, the city and its river were making their mark on the big screen. The most celebrated is Get Carter (1971), Mike Hodges' bleak gangster thriller starring Michael Caine, which used locations across Tyneside. Its most iconic setting was the brutalist Trinity Square multi-storey car park in Gateshead, a building so associated with the film that it became known as the Get Carter car park. It was demolished in 2010, its concrete decks torn down between July and October of that year.

The area's screen credits are wide-ranging. Mike Figgis shot his 1988 noir Stormy Monday around the Newcastle Quayside, with Sting, Sean Bean and Melanie Griffith. The landmark BBC drama Our Friends in the North (1996), Peter Flannery's epic tracing four friends over three decades, was filmed largely on Tyneside. Mark Herman's comedy Purely Belter (2000), adapted from a local novel about two lads scheming to buy Newcastle United season tickets, roamed the city and Gateshead. More recently, ITV's long-running crime drama Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn as the raincoat-clad detective, has made the North East and its coastline a character in its own right.

The Ouseburn's creative heart

The screen story of this part of Newcastle is not only about famous productions. The Ouseburn valley, on Heaton's doorstep, has become one of the city's creative quarters, home to studios, music venues and artists' workshops. Cobalt Studios and the wider cluster of former industrial buildings host film, music and design work, while Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books, celebrates the storytelling that television dramas like Byker Grove drew upon. Beneath it all runs the Victoria Tunnel, a 19th-century waggonway turned wartime air-raid shelter whose atmospheric depths have themselves drawn documentary crews.

Seeing it for yourself

Many of these locations can still be explored. Walk the Quayside to trace the Stormy Monday scenery, look up at the Byker Wall that framed so many Byker Grove exteriors, or spend an afternoon in the Ouseburn among the studios and venues that keep the area's creative life going. The Get Carter car park is long gone, but the film's Tyneside remains recognisable in its bridges and back lanes.

For more on the region's screen heritage, see our guides to Alnwick on screen and to the film and TV locations of Durham.