Tynemouth on Screen: Film and TV Locations

With a ruined priory on a headland, a mile of sand at Longsands and a pier reaching almost a kilometre out to sea, the Tynemouth coast is made for the camera. Location scouts have known it for decades, and the stretch of shore from the mouth of the Tyne up to Whitley Bay has stood in for crime scenes, football dreams and gritty 1970s Newcastle. Tynemouth Priory and Castle is the landmark most people recognise, but the real star of the area's recent screen life is a raincoat-wearing detective.

Vera and the North East coast

For most viewers the Tynemouth coast is Vera country. ITV's long-running crime drama, based on Ann Cleeves's novels and starring Brenda Blethyn as DCI Vera Stanhope, used the North East coast and Northumberland as its backdrop across its whole run from 2011. Cleeves herself has strong links to the coast, and Tynemouth and Whitley Bay feature repeatedly, with Longsands beach, the Priory headland and local cafes all appearing in scenes over the years.

Just around the river mouth, North Shields Fish Quay is Vera's heartland. The Low Lighthouse and the working quayside appear frequently, and one of the most quoted moments in the series, from the very first episode, sees Vera at the Fish Quay early in the story. If you want to follow the trail properly, the quay, the beach and the headland make an easy walk from Tynemouth village.

Tynemouth Priory on screen

The Priory and Castle ruins have drawn film-makers long before Vera. Their most famous appearance is in the 1971 crime classic Get Carter, in which Michael Caine plays Jack Carter, a London gangster who returns to Tyneside after his brother's death. The film is celebrated for using real Newcastle and coastal locations rather than studio sets, and the dramatic clifftop ruins are part of its bleak, unmistakable sense of place.

The headland's appeal to productions is easy to understand. The medieval gatehouse, the moat and the sweeping sea views give a single site several distinct looks, from imposing fortress to lonely coastal ruin, with almost no set dressing required.

Longsands, Whitley Bay and the wider coast

The beaches have their own screen credits. Longsands stood in for the training-ground and seaside scenes in Goal! The Dream Begins (2005), the football drama about a young player chasing a professional career, which shot along the Tynemouth sands.

Head north and Whitley Bay has featured just as often. The seaside comedy Purely Belter (2000) used the town and the landmark Spanish City dome, while Whitley Bay and Tynemouth both appear in the BBC detective series 55 Degrees North (2004 to 2005). The coast also turns up in Byker Grove and in Peter Flannery's acclaimed Our Friends in the North (1996), which drew on real Tyneside places to tell its decades-spanning story.

Following the trail

You can walk almost all of it for free. Start on the headland at the Priory and Castle, drop down to the pier and Longsands, then carry on around to King Edward's Bay and the village cafes on Front Street. The stretch between Tynemouth and North Shields Fish Quay takes in most of the coast's screen moments in a single afternoon.

If the North East's screen history has caught your interest, the region is full of it. Alnwick Castle has doubled for Hogwarts and Downton Abbey, covered in our guide to Alnwick on screen, while Durham Cathedral has played everything from a school of wizardry to an alien realm, as we explain in the Durham on screen guide.