Kelly's Wharf: £100m Riverside Regeneration Begins in Hebburn

The long-anticipated transformation of Hebburn's former shipyard riverside is under way. Kelly's Wharf, a £100m riverside regeneration of the old Hawthorn Leslie shipyard site, has taken its first concrete step, with new funding unlocking the opening phase of what is planned as a major new neighbourhood on the Tyne.

Funding unlocks phase one

A funding facility of £1.95m, provided by Develop North to Hebburn Riverside Development, has released the money needed to begin construction of the first homes. This first phase will see nine executive family homes built by Oakley Homes, rising three storeys and designed to make the most of their riverside setting. They are the first physical sign of a scheme that has been talked about for years, and mark the point at which plans on paper start to become bricks and mortar.

A new neighbourhood on the Tyne

The wider Kelly's Wharf project has planning consent for more than 440 homes, alongside shops, a nursery, landscaping and public-realm improvements, creating a mixed-use riverside neighbourhood where cranes and slipways once stood. The first houses are being pitched at the premium end, with features including riverside balconies and generous gardens running down towards the water, but the full scheme is intended to bring homes, jobs and new life to a stretch of the Hebburn riverside that has stood largely empty for decades.

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The development sits on the same reach of the Tyne as Hebburn Riverside Park, the green space created on reclaimed shipyard land, so the town's riverside heritage and its future will sit side by side.

Honouring the shipyard's past

The name is a deliberate nod to the site's history. This was the Hawthorn Leslie yard that built HMS Kelly, the destroyer commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten during the Second World War, among many other famous vessels. The developers have said the scheme will preserve and celebrate that legacy, keeping Hebburn's shipbuilding story visible as the land finds a new purpose.

The funding milestone was reported by the Shields Gazette. For a town so shaped by the river and the yards along it, the return of activity to the old shipyard is a significant moment.