page_title: Deckham
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Deckham / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Hendon Road, Deckham, is one of the main streets in the suburb and encloses a large council estate. The view in the background is eastern Newcastle upon Tyne.
context_page_description: Deckham is a residential suburb in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead in Tyne and Wear, England. It is bordered by Gateshead town centre to the north, Sheriff Hill to the south, Felling and Carr Hill to the east and Shipcote to the west. It lies on the B1296, the route of the old Great North Road, 1 mile south of Gateshead town centre, 1.5 miles south of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and 13 miles north of the city of Durham. In 2011, Deckham had a population of 9,938.
  Deckham's history is sparsely documented but suggests that the settlement was established at the junction of Carr Hill Road and the Old Durham Road in the early 19th century alongside the estate of Deckham Hall, built several centuries earlier and inhabited at one time by Thomas Deckham. The village grew, and at the turn of the 20th century was enveloped by urban spawl when neighbouring Gateshead absorbed its outlying villages and settlements. Deckham is largely distinguished from other areas by a commercial area on Old Durham Road which is the principal route through the suburb.
context_section_description: Unlike Sheriff Hill, Carr Hill and Low Fell, Deckham's history is sparsely recorded. It indicates that, by the middle of the 19th century, there was a small settlement which was part of Gateshead Fell; a wild and treacherous area of common land notable for the criminality of the tinkers and hawkers who lived there. Ordnance survey mapping illustrates the sparsity of buildings in 1860; the area contained little except Deckham Hall, a few other dwellings and two public houses at the point where the old turnpike road branched off towards Carr's Hill. The two public houses were the 'Speed the Plough' and 'The Ship'.
  The Deckham Hall estate was on the east side of Old Durham Road, 1.25 miles from the Tyne Bridge. It is evidenced in 1614 and belonged to Thomas Deckham, who died the same year and bequeathed it to his granddaughter with "three pounds for the bringing home of water" to the poor people of the area. It changed hands regularly between the families Wooler, James and Bowker, in the centuries after Deckham's death and varied in size whilst doing so. Alderman Benjamin Biggar, Mayor of Gateshead 1861–2, is thought to have lived at Deckham Hall.
  By the turn of the 20th century Deckham's rural aspect had changed. Whilst there remained large areas of grass and woodland between Deckham and Gateshead, there was a period of extensive building; several dozen dwellings were erected by 1895 in the Mount Pleasant area as Gateshead expanded southwards. A public house was built at the junction of Taylor Terrace and Split Crow Road. Two years later, a tract of Tyneside flats was built on the west side of the Old Durham Road and many streets in the area, such as Chandos Street, Shipcote Terrace, Raby Street and Northborne Street, are evidenced, along with an unnamed school. By 1919, some rural scenes could still be enjoyed but the fields were "rapidly encroached upon" in the 1920s and 1930s and replaced with more terraced housing at Caris Street, Fullerton Place and Methuen Street and large tracts of council houses. By this time, Deckham Hall was in a state of disrepair and was notable to residents for its resemblance to a haunted house "because of its air of gloom and the strange echoes to be heard on windy nights". The hall was demolished in 1930 and more council houses were erected on the site.
  Since the intensive period of house building, little has changed. At the west end of the suburb, the Tyneside flats at Northborne Street and surrounding streets remain in situ and here there is "housing and little else". Much of this housing is in poor condition, some is in "crumbling disrepair" and requires substantial investment. Old Durham Road has developed into the focal point of the neighbourhood and is the sole commercial area, with small, independent shops running along the western end of the road backing onto the streets from Inskip Terrace and Shipcote Terrace. Whilst many retail units are in a state of deterioration, and despite a report describing recent housing development on the east side of Old Durham Road as "poorly handled and unsightly", the area remains "interesting and lively". By contrast, the central and eastern areas of Deckham are affected by a more marked decline. At the western edge there are stone remnants of an old, rural settlement, but the remainder, grouped around Edgeware and Kingston Roads, consists of bland, repetitive social housing arranged on long, curved streets which combine to create an environment which is anonymous, claustrophobic and disorientating. One source describes the environment as one where "eyesores become landmarks (lock–up workshops on Kingston Road), any slight change in materials becomes significant (system–built housing on Kingston Road), and any attempt to do something different becomes a relief (a corner garden on Mayfair Gardens)".
  The net result is that, in Deckham today:
  There is something of a sense of isolation in parts of Deckham, especially further up the hill as development densities drop, commercial and social facilities disappear and activity levels on the street fall away.
caption: Hendon Road
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "FE47,X43", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "314", "Image YResolution": "314", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Version 1.0", "Image DateTime": "2012:06:19 13:50:26", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "852", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 37, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5080", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4964", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "38/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:06:19 13:50:26", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:06:19 13:50:26", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "37/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "71/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "4956", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "81", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}