★ In our guides ↓

On Our List

Shire Gate Cafe

A proper home-cooked café by the old cattle market, known for hearty breakfasts, excellent cakes and genuinely warm, attentive staff.

Address:

Cattle Market, Hexham, NE46 1LS
Call:
01434 605388

Hours:

Daily: 9am - 5pm

Map

Good to Know

Shire Gate Café is a family-run café on Cattle Market in the middle of Hexham, a few minutes' walk from the Abbey and the Market Place. Open daily through the day, with Sunday roasts on Sundays.

Tom's Notebook

Best for: A proper home-cooked lunch in Hexham, cake, and Sunday roast.

Food: Lasagne, quiche, gammon with eggs and chips, baked potatoes, and a cake counter with banoffee pie and trifle among the favourites.

Best time: Weekdays for a quieter lunch; arrive early on Sundays for the roast.

H&S tip: Leave room for pudding — the cakes and trifle come up again and again in reviews.

On Our List

Shire Gate kept turning up in searches around Heather & Sand, so curiosity got the better of us.

Why people seem to like it

It's the kind of place people who live in Hexham recommend before anywhere else. Reviewers keep coming back to the home cooking and the friendly, welcoming staff.

The Sunday roasts get some of the warmest reviews of all — tender meat, proper veg and generous plates.

Not every visit is perfect

A few visitors mention service slowing down at the busiest times, particularly on Sundays. It doesn't seem to put many people off, but it's worth not being in a rush.

So, would we go?

Yes. Honest home cooking, a big local following and a roast worth queuing for is exactly the sort of thing we go looking for.

But this isn't our review — not yet. When we've been, we'll replace it with what we found ourselves.

Heather & Sand verdict: On Our List. A well-loved, family-run Hexham café with a reputation for home cooking and a properly good Sunday roast. We'd just like to try that roast ourselves before giving it the full H&S seal of approval.

A Little Note From Heather & Sand

We haven't quite made it here ourselves yet, but it's on our list!

We're working our way around Northumberland, personally visiting and reviewing as many of the places featured in our Listed section as we can. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

In the meantime, we do our homework. Before adding somewhere to Heather & Sand, we research it, look at what other visitors have to say and check that it has a good reputation. If the feedback isn't encouraging, it generally doesn't make our list.

Of course, a little online research is no substitute for muddy boots, a decent coffee and seeing somewhere for ourselves. So until we've visited, we'll leave the personal review to one side.

A little about us...

Heather & Sand is our little corner of Northumberland — a collection of places, stories, walks and discoveries from a county we love.

Through our Journal, Guide and Listed pages, we hope to help you discover somewhere new, revisit an old favourite or simply enjoy a little Northumberland from wherever you happen to be.

Tom, Lucy & the Heather & Sand crew.

Featured in our guides