Hexham on Screen: Film and TV Locations

The Tyne Valley has long drawn film-makers to its Roman frontier and market-town streets. Hadrian's Wall gives directors sweeping, treeless crags and an ancient horizon, while Hexham itself offers a working town of stone lanes and an abbey that has stood since Saxon times. Between them they have provided the backdrop for a Hollywood blockbuster, a much-loved crime drama and more besides.

The Sycamore Gap tree and Robin Hood

For a generation, the single most famous piece of the Wall on screen was the lone sycamore that grew in a dramatic dip between Milecastle 39 and Crag Lough, a couple of miles west of Housesteads. It featured in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), the Kevin Costner adventure that also starred Morgan Freeman and Alan Rickman. Robin and Azeem stride the Wall with Steel Rigg behind them, and the tree in its perfect hollow became so bound up with the film that it was widely known as the "Robin Hood tree".

Sadly, that tree is no longer there. On the night of 28 September 2023 it was cut down with a chainsaw in an act of criminal vandalism, a loss felt across Northumberland and far beyond. The National Trust, which cared for the site, salvaged the trunk and seeds, and shoots have since begun to grow from the stump. The gap in the crags remains as striking as ever, but visitors should know they are walking to the site of a lost landmark rather than to a tree that still stands.

Hadrian's Wall on screen more widely

The Wall's appeal to film crews goes well beyond one tree. The wild ridge of the Whin Sill, the drystone lines snaking over the crags and the emptiness of the Northumberland National Park give productions a sense of ancient isolation that is hard to fake. The stretch around Steel Rigg, Peel Crags and Housesteads is the most photographed, and its dramatic profile has stood in for frontier country in documentaries and dramas alike. For anyone wanting to walk it, our guide to Hadrian's Wall from Hexham sets out the practicalities.

Vera and the Tyne Valley on television

Hexham's biggest small-screen moment came with ITV's Vera, the long-running crime drama led by Brenda Blethyn. In the show's thirteenth series the town doubled as the fictional Bentham, with filming around the Market Place, the Shambles, St Mary's Chare and Tyne Green, and Hexham Abbey recognisable in the background. Nearby Corbridge, three miles east, has appeared repeatedly across the series, its handsome streets and pubs standing in for the kind of quiet Northumberland community the programme loves. The Wall itself has provided the wide, brooding landscapes that open so many episodes.

Hexham Abbey and the town

Beyond any single production, Hexham Abbey is the town's natural leading landmark, a Grade I listed church founded around 674 AD with an Anglo-Saxon crypt built from recycled Roman stone. Its scale and setting on the edge of the Sele make it a ready backdrop, and it is open daily with free entry for anyone wanting to see it in person. The Market Place, the medieval Old Gaol and the narrow chares that thread through the centre give the town a photogenic, lived-in character that suits period and contemporary filming alike.

Seeing it for yourself

Most of these locations are easy to reach. The Wall sites are served in season by the AD122 bus from Hexham, while the town-centre spots are a short stroll from the railway station. For more castle drama within easy reach, Alnwick Castle to the north has its own remarkable screen history, from Harry Potter to Downton Abbey, set out in the Alnwick on Screen guide. Further south, Durham Cathedral has doubled for Hogwarts and Asgard. Wherever you start, the Tyne Valley rewards a slower look: the same crags and streets that filled the screen are still here to walk.