The Oldest Pubs in Heaton and Ouseburn

Heaton and the Ouseburn valley below it have some of the most characterful old pubs in Newcastle, from Victorian taverns clinging to the riverside to grand interwar hotels on the high street. Behind their doors lie stories of shipbuilding, brewing dynasties and generations of Tyneside music-making. Here is our guide to the oldest and most historic pubs in and around Heaton.

The Tyne Bar

Down in the valley where the Ouseburn meets the Tyne, The Tyne Bar occupies a building dating from 1895. It replaced an earlier Ship Tavern, first opened on the site in 1850 but destroyed by fire, giving the spot a pub history stretching back over 170 years. Today it is famous for its riverside beer garden beneath the bridges and its free live music most nights.

Best for: Best for: riverside history and live music under the bridges.

The Cumberland Arms

Standing atop the bank overlooking the valley, The Cumberland Arms has had a pub on the site since the building was rebuilt in the late 1890s. It is one of the North East's great homes of folk and traditional music, with real ale on hand-pull and a fiercely loyal following, and it remains gloriously unmodernised, a proper Victorian survivor.

Best for: Best for: folk music, real ale and Victorian atmosphere.

The Ship Inn

On Stepney Bank, The Ship Inn is one of the oldest pubs in the valley, a reminder of the days when this was a working industrial district of potteries, glassworks and boatyards. It now pairs its traditional pub character with a fully vegan kitchen, a very Ouseburn combination of the old and the new.

Best for: Best for: old-pub character with a modern, vegan kitchen.

The Free Trade Inn

The Free Trade Inn is a Victorian pub perched above the Tyne with one of the best views in the city, out over the bridges. Its plain interior, wooden bar and open fires have barely changed in decades, and its walls of graffiti and ever-changing ale list have made it a Newcastle institution.

Best for: Best for: unbeatable Tyne views and a proper, unchanged interior.

The Corner House

Up in Heaton itself, The Corner House on Heaton Road is a landmark of a different era: a substantial pub and hotel built by the Tyneside brewer James Deuchar in 1934. A survivor of the great age of the roadhouse and the brewery-built hotel, it is still a busy local for pub food, sport and its weekly quiz.

Best for: Best for: a classic 1930s pub-hotel and a proper Sunday lunch.

The Chillingham

On Chillingham Road, next to the Metro station, The Chillingham is a large, long-established pub at the heart of Heaton's high street, a former hotel that has anchored this corner for generations and remains a lively local with quiz nights and sport.

Best for: Best for: a big, sociable local right on Chillingham Road.

A historic pub crawl

Because the Ouseburn pubs sit so close together, they make one of the best short pub crawls in the city; see our guide to the best pubs and bars in Ouseburn. For more of the area's past, see the lost buildings of Heaton.

Know a historic Heaton pub we should include? Get in touch.