North Shields was founded in 1225 by Germanus, Prior of Tynemouth, as a fishing port on a narrow strip of land along the river around what is now Clive Street. The buildings were called shiels, the Middle English word for temporary fishermen's huts that gave both the town and its quay their names. The strip filled up. Newcastle's burgesses tried to strangle it in 1290 by petitioning the king to forbid the loading of cargoes there. The port survived on salt and herring instead. By the 18th century there was nowhere left to build at river level, so the town climbed the bluff. Dockwray Square was laid out in 1763 as a set of elegant townhouses for prosperous families, but the new development soon had its own sanitation problems and the wealthy migrated again, this time to Northumberland Square. Dockwray Square slid into slum. In the early twentieth century a young boy lived there with his family for a few years before he became famous; his name was Stan Laurel.

North Shields built its working life around the river. The Fish Quay was the largest English port for prawns and once the country's biggest kipper producer. The Smith's Dock Company, on the eastern edge of the town, built ships from the 19th century until it finally closed in 1987. Smaller yards before it had built the Northumbrian coble, a distinctive small inshore fishing vessel with a lug sail, well known in the north-east. Larger yards built wooden sailing collier brigs that carried Tyneside coal to London. Coal mining itself had collieries at Preston, Percy Main and New York, three outlying villages now folded into the town. The Donald Campbell story has a North Shields footnote too: the wreckage of his jet-powered Bluebird K7, which crashed during a water speed attempt on Coniston Water in 1967, was restored in a workshop here by local engineer Bill Smith.

On the western edge of the town stands the Meadow Well estate, built in the 1930s to rehouse the residents the council had cleared from the Dockwray Square slums and the Low Town. The estate was meant to be the answer to a century of bad housing. It became its own problem. On 9 September 1991 the estate erupted. Cars were torched. The community centre burned. The Meadow Well riots dominated UK news for days and became one of the case studies that defined how Britain talked about deprivation and council housing through the 1990s. Following the unrest, the government granted £37.5 million over five years through the City Challenge scheme to regenerate the area. The estate was gradually rebuilt over the following decade. The film Dream On, released in 1991, was set on the estate before the riots and acquired an unintended documentary weight afterwards.

The 16-million-pound regeneration of the former Albert Edward docks created Royal Quays in the 1990s, with housing, an outlet shopping centre, a marina, and the now-demolished Wet'n'Wild indoor water park. Mark di Suvero's Tyne Anew, his only large-scale public artwork in the UK, stands at the dock. The Port of Tyne International Passenger Terminal here hosted 52 cruise ships in 2017 carrying 120,000 visitors. DFDS Seaways still runs daily ferries to IJmuiden near Amsterdam from the same dock. North Shields has spent the last forty years rebuilding the river end of itself, one regeneration scheme at a time.

Coordinates 55.01 N, 1.43 W on the north bank of the Tyne near the river mouth, about 8 miles east of Newcastle. Recommended viewing altitude 2,000 to 4,000 feet. The town sits at two visibly different elevations, the historic riverside strip and the plateau above. Look for the four lighthouses of the Fish Quay, the cluster of Royal Quays development to the west, and the Albert Edward dock basin. Nearest ICAO airport Newcastle International (EGNT) is 8 nautical miles west. Durham Tees Valley (EGNV) is 28 nautical miles south.