Heddon
Frenchmens Row
Last Updated:
20 Oct 2025
Heddon
This is a
Dwelling, Pub
54.996612, -1.774138
Founded in
Current status is
Redeveloped
Designer (if known):
The sundial and row name survives.
Directly on the municipal border with Northumberland lies a set of typical terraces with a very atypical history - though sadly these aren't the originals.
You may very well have spotted them between Throckley and Heddon. They're named the Frenchmen's Row, with name dating back to the turn of the 19th century. They fulfilled a different purpose at first though - like at Heddon, pit rows were scattered along the lanes to accommodate the hewers who worked at the pits nearby. Directly south were countless pits all connected underground, requiring dozens upon dozens of men to manually transport and extract.
They never ended up being occupied by miners however. Loyalist clergymen fleeing the Revolution landed on the Tyne. Though not common, there are multiple occasions this happened such as a landing of 30 French prisoners into Shields who were marched to Edinburgh in 1797. The clergymen appeared to arrive here in 1796, in 3 transport ships and were mostly reverends and such. The cottages described accommodated 30 of them and they received a good allowance from the government and were able to work. They cultivated the adjacent fields and possibly brewed their own ales given the appearance of a beer house on the corner dwelling. They will surely have made a pretty penny with the lines of travellers and pitman walking the road it lay on.
They did only remain until 1802 after the Treaty of Amiens. However, newspaper reports from the time express their deep gratitude and happiness in staying on Tyneside for those years. They erected the sundial which has since been placed on the modern terrace, which also features the year 1802 when they left. It was restored in 1907 also.
From there they became standard accommodation for Tyneside folk as well as poor houses for some time. The name had stuck by the 1840s and from there became a bit of a waypoint for travellers, fox hunts and the odd criminal.
The original rehouses were demolished in 1962 due to them being no fit state, and were completely rebuilt by the local Rural District Council.
Listing Description (if available)
Shown are the Ordnance Survey maps of the 1860s and the 1890s. Interestingly, they unravel two great milestones of North East history. Directly in the front yards of Frenchmans Row is the Fosse and line of the Roman Wall, the former being the deep ditch dug along the north side of the wall. The Vallum, which is still apparent from the west of Newcastle into the wilds of Northumberland, was a smaller and flattere defensive ditch.
Align this to our 18th and 19th industrial history, as directly south of the row is a large cluster of pits worked by the men who were supposed to live here. This place was a bit of a coal boomtown in the early 19th century, though their operation was slightly antiquated by the 1860s with these small scale workings obsolete to the centralised mechanical giants we're more familiar with today. They were often named after the infrastructure, a family member or a local geographical feature. Many of them ring true for these pits.
The Ordnance Survey of 1964 reflects the encroachment of suburban development for the Tyneside commuter belt, enveloping both sides of the Frenchmens Row. Though published in 1964, the houses shown on the plan are still the originals having been surveyed in the prior decade, though by time of publishing they had been replaced by the houses we know today. The Royal French Arms, by this time a public house rather than a restrictive beer house, had been rebuilt in front of its predecessor. These are now flats.
Frenchmens Row in September 2025. The commemorative plaque and sundial are in view.
One of the few known photographs of the terraces with the rebuilt Royal French Arms in view. Note the sundial again appearing as well as the naked undressed stone. An Auty series postcard shared by Heddon History Society
An early drawing of the Frenchmens Row from 1796, from the History of Northumberland vol 13 p76. Published online by the Heddon History Society https://heddonhistory.weebly.com/frenchmans-row.html