Best Playgrounds in and around Newcastle City Centre

Newcastle city centre is more child-friendly than its shops and offices suggest. Within a short walk or a couple of Metro stops of Monument you can reach several proper fenced playgrounds, most of them free and recently rebuilt, set inside Victorian parks with cafes, room to run and something for a range of ages. This guide runs through the best play areas close to the centre, from the one you can walk to in ten minutes to the ones worth a short journey out.

The most central: Leazes Park

The closest good playground to the shops is in Leazes Park, the city's oldest public park, which opened in 1873 and sits directly behind St James' Park. Its large woodland play area is split into two age zones, so toddlers and older children each get equipment that suits them, and it is backed up by tennis and basketball courts, table tennis, and picnic and barbecue areas around the lake. The paths are flat and pram and wheelchair friendly, and the whole park is free and open at all times. For anyone living in or visiting the centre, it is the easy default: ten minutes on foot from Haymarket and a genuine patch of green in which to let off steam.

The best play area: Exhibition Park

A little further up, at the southern tip of the Town Moor, Exhibition Park has arguably the best play provision of any park near the centre. A £3.2 million restoration completed in 2015 rebuilt the fenced children's playground on a soft safety surface with swings, slides, climbing frames and spring toys for younger children, and gave it a tall rustic wooden climbing structure with a metal tube slide that older children make straight for. Alongside the play area there is outdoor gym equipment, a skate park, resurfaced tennis courts and a cafe, with the ornamental boating lake and the 1929 pavilion (now Wylam Brewery) close by. It is free, open at all times and a ten-minute walk up from Haymarket Metro, which makes it an easy half-day out.

For the west end: Elswick Park

West of the centre, Elswick Park gives the city's west end its own well-equipped play space. The fenced children's play area is built for a range of ages, and it sits among tennis courts, a half-size basketball court, a five-a-side pitch, an interactive football wall, table tennis and a skate area, so there is genuinely something for toddlers and older children alike. The park also has a community garden and orchard and the Elswick leisure centre with its reopened pool, so a visit can combine play with a swim. It is a short bus ride or a brisk walk out along Westgate Road, and it is one of the sites earmarked in the council's programme of enhanced, more accessible play spaces.

Animals and a playground: Jesmond Dene

For a play area with something extra, head to Jesmond Dene, the wooded river valley on the north-eastern edge of the city. Next to the free Pets' Corner animal centre, home to alpacas, pigs, goats and rabbits, is a fenced play area built as part of the Ouseburn Parks project in 2011 and designed for children under eight. That combination of animals, a playground and an easy woodland walk beside the burn makes the Dene one of the best half-day outings for younger families near the centre, with Millfield House cafe on hand for lunch. West Jesmond and South Gosforth Metro stations are each about fifteen minutes' walk away.

Room to run: the Town Moor and the Ouseburn

Not every day out needs fixed equipment. The vast Town Moor begins barely a mile north of Grey Street and gives children a thousand acres of open common land to run across, larger than several London parks combined, though it is grazing land so keep an eye out for the cattle and expect uneven ground rather than made paths. East of the centre, the Ouseburn Valley is home to the free Ouseburn Farm, a small city farm set on meadows beneath the viaducts, which pairs well with a riverside walk down to the Quayside. Neither is a playground in the strict sense, but both give families space and interest without a penny spent.

Choosing where to go

For a quick outing from the middle of town, Leazes Park is the closest and Exhibition Park has the best equipment, and the two are a short walk apart on either side of St James' Park. For younger children who love animals, Jesmond Dene is the pick; for families in the west end, Elswick Park is the local standout. All four playgrounds are free, fenced and open all year, and each is reachable from the centre on foot or by a short Metro or bus ride.

Know a Newcastle playground we should feature? Get in touch via our contact page.