I don’t think there’s many better places to spend a sunny Friday night
I was born at Preston hospital, and I spent most of my life in North Shields. I’ve moved between Whitley Bay, Tynemouth but mostly in North Shields from a young age down on the quayside, so I’ve seen the development of the quayside probably 30 odd years ago from what it was to what it is now which is huge change. I’ve played a lot of sport here as well from Percy Park rugby club and Tynemouth Cricket Club so, I’ve got huge friends from playing sport here as well.
It’s massively changed, we lived at Dolphin Quays, so it was the first sort of purpose-built flats and the transition’s been massive. Howard Street’s massively changed from being sort of solicitors and what have you to what it is now. The Exchange is really, really good and the housing around the square as well. It has changed hugely; there’s a lot of smaller shops as well in North Shields.
Marcus in the nets, Tynemouth Cricket Club © Hazel Plater
My favourite place is Tynemouth Cricket Club, although it says Tynemouth it is in North Shields. I started coming here about the age of 4. My dad played cricket here and I would come and watch him on a Saturday and then that sort of grew to me playing junior cricket here, senior cricket which I still play today. That’s then transitioned to me coaching here and I’m on the committee at the moment, so it’s been a big part of my life, but it’s also now a big part of my family’s life as well.
It’s a bit of a hub of the community at times. I don’t think there’s many better places to spend a sunny Friday night, whether watching the cricket. That’s when we have a lot of our junior stuff on so a lot of the parents stay here you know they might have a drink or they meet their friends. There’s a lot of people as well come down and it’s just a lovely meeting place for the community and members.
The cricket club has a lot of things going on during the winter as well. We do an annual Christmas food bank pick up and it goes through to doing weddings, birthdays, christenings and just a week ago we had the fireworks night. That is our biggest fundraiser, it’s where we can keep the club going and improve our facilities as well. It’s huge for us but it’s also huge for the community.
2 years ago we had no girls’ teams we had the odd one playing. So we’ve gone from having no teams to 5 teams this year, to 65 girls. It’s the biggest growth area. The pathway for girls’ cricket is pretty good, especially Northumberland. My eldest plays for Northumberland and it’s brilliant, it’s a great sport for girls to get into at the moment.
The thing that we talk about a lot at the cricket club is momentum and it’s really difficult to get, but once you’ve got it you need to keep on building on it. I feel like North Shields has also got that at the moment with building stuff, the money that’s going into it, the regeneration. And from a personal point of view, I feel the key thing is to keep on building on that and making it a place where people are proud of and want to be part of. Keep on attracting new businesses. There’s a lot of businesses, things that the town’s never had really. The Quayside, it’s going from strength to strength, but also not forgetting its roots. So, just keep that momentum going and keep on improving the town.
For me personally it’s just to keep on sticking with Tynemouth Cricket Club, improving the club as much as we can. We’re all volunteers, there’s a lot of us who put time in trying to bring cricket to everybody. The more investment we can put into this place, it makes it better for the area, but we also look to try and make it a bit more diverse as well. There’s a few things we’re looking at which may come to fruition in 2026, but we’ll see.
Marcus was interviewed as part of the North Shields Voices Project.