Lort Burn

Lort Burn is one of Newcastle's hidden streams - it runs under Grey Street and Dean Street.

Historical Importance: “The very early commerce of Newcastle appears to have been carried on, not on the Tyne itself - the Sandhill and lower parts of the Town then being covered with the tide - but in the Lort Burn, which passes down a ravine under the present Grey Street, Dean Street and the Side. The tide ran far up this valley. The first houses erected in the Cloth Market had warehouses behind them, communicating with this burn, which was navigable to their doors up to the High Bridge. Afterwards the merchants moved lower down nearer the river, to the Side and the Sandhill.” (The River Tyne, James Guthrie 1880) Souce: Riverscape, Newcastle Arts Centre.

Facinating Fact: In 1296 a wooden, 135 ft long galley ship was constructed at the mouth of the Lort Burn in Newcastle. The ship cost £205, and is the earliest record of shipbuilding in Newcastle. 

Culvert / Infilling: "[Lort Burn] Rises in Leazes, between Barrack Road and Richardson Road, then runs across Richardson Road just north of junction with Queen Victoria Road, down north side of St. Thomas Street and bends south just after junction with Percy Street and so on beneath Grey Street and Dean Street....By 1580 part of the Lort Dene was being infilled and by 1646 the lowest section was being culverted. The section in the Side was finished in 1696. The Lort Burn was fully covered in 1784 because was deemed "a vast nauseous hollow… a place of filth and dirt". To create Grey Street, 250,000 cartloads of material were dumped in the Lort Dene above the culvert to level the site." (SiteLines, Newcastle City Council)