Nos 1-75 Dunn Terrace, including Graham House, Wolseley House, The Cabin and YMCA Byker Neighbourhood Youth Project. Includes: Nos 1-66 Northumberland Terrace, including Salisbury House. Attached brick walls, timber fencing and dustbin shelters, and cove

Dunn Terrace comprises numbers 1-75, including Graham House, Wolseley House, The Cabin and YMCA Byker Neighbourhood Youth Project, together with numbers 1-66 Northumberland Terrace, including Salisbury House. The listing also covers attached brick walls, timber fencing and dustbin shelters, and covered timber shelters outside number 1 Dunn Terrace.

This complex of flats and maisonettes was built between 1975 and 1978 for the City of Newcastle upon Tyne by Ralph Erskine's Arkitektkontor, with Vernon Gracie as site architect, White, Young and Partners as structural engineers, and Shepherds Construction Ltd as main contractor. The construction uses in situ concrete cross walls with concrete strip foundations and ground beams. The road-facing elevations are clad in strong brown, orange and buff patterned metric modular brick, while the inner face uses red and buff brick, with elaborate timber detailing and white eternit panels. Graham House, a pale brick link block, is of concrete block construction with red garden walls. Pre-cast cantilever brackets are cast into the cross walls. The roofs are pale blue sheet metal, with projecting lift and stair towers rising to metal-clad points that form important townscape features.

The development ranges from two to eight storeys on a sloping site. A perimeter wall block curves in a gentle, rippling semi-circle from Byker Bank to the former railway cutting, terminating in Tom Collins House. It incorporates a link block at numbers 1-16 Dunn Terrace, which divides the Dunn Terrace area in two and ranges from two to five storeys. This link block connects to the main wall at second floor level via a bridge, with the neighbourhood shop set on the ground floor beneath this junction.

Two-storey family maisonettes occupy the ground floor level, set within walled gardens on the inner face, with smaller maisonettes above accessed from balconies on every third level. These balconies are semi-independent structures designed to reduce noise, with a seat or planting box covering the gap between the balcony and the building. Living rooms and bedrooms are positioned above or below the entrance level, which contains kitchen-diners with entrance doors set in pairs. Balconies to bedrooms serve the dual purpose of providing outdoor space and acting as fire escape routes.

Dunn Terrace and Northumberland Terrace display the most brilliantly patterned brickwork of all the Byker blocks, with rich diaper and chevron patterns over four entrances cut through the wall, and contrasting brick forming the letters BYKER in semi-abstract pattern. Some of the inner lintels of these openings are enriched with 19th-century sculptural ornament reused from demolished buildings. The north side is almost blind, save for tiny double-glazed small kitchen, bathroom and landing windows, with the only opening windows on the contrasting south face. Timber windows incorporate sliding aluminium opening panels. All flats have timber doors with glazed panels, many renewed in hardwood, and built-in bench seats outside.

Northumberland Terrace has red-brown timber doors, fencing, projecting ventilator covers, heating covers and dustbin covers, all of slatted timber. Brown timber balustraded access balconies face west over Byker Bank. Salisbury House, mainly of red and orange brick, steps down sharply to two storeys; where the roof drops sharply, south-facing windows are incorporated. The inner face has soft green projecting individual balconies and soft green fencing above garden walls.

The rest of the perimeter block has access balconies with soft green painted timber balustrading and plastic sheet roofing facing inwards. Ground floor units have projecting entrances under sloping metal roofs. The link block at Graham House has access balconies facing east, with red-brown timber trimmings to these and to individual balconies facing west. South-facing windows and balconies are incorporated where the roofline drops sharply. A covered car port outside number 1 Dunn Terrace forms part of the original construction, with a corrugated plastic sheet canopy on steel posts. Wolseley House has red-brown balcony detailing. Erskine also designed the timber seating around the estate.

The interiors of the maisonettes are simple, with stairs leading up from the kitchen-diner, still divided by the original counter in some flats.

The site slopes to the south-west, giving views over the Tyne to the centres of Newcastle and Gateshead. The configuration of the wall and link, and the two groups of houses they shelter, maximises these views at high density. The design of the wall reflected Newcastle's policy by the late 1960s of not placing family units above the ground floor, while the small upper maisonettes addressed the large need for one-bedroomed accommodation to serve the high proportion of elderly people then forming the Byker community.

The Byker area, first extensively developed in the 1890s, was earmarked for redevelopment from the late 1950s, with a new motorway planned to the north. In March 1967 the Housing Architect's Department proposed building a barrier block to shelter the area, an idea supported by Ralph Erskine, who was invited to develop the area for Newcastle Corporation in 1969. His Plan of Intent, published in 1970, promised a complete redevelopment programme of housing and landscaping with cost yardsticks, while maintaining the traditions and character of the neighbourhood and rehousing residents without breaking family and social ties. His achievement in rehousing 40 per cent of the original residents on the original site was exceptional, as were his methods of keeping the community informed of development and seeking their support and suggestions for the low-rise housing.

In achieving these goals, Erskine sought to exploit the south-facing sloping site, to develop a system of pedestrian routes through the estate and to provide a specific local individuality to each group of houses. The estate was redeveloped in a rolling programme of no more than 250 units at a time, to try to maintain the community's infrastructure. The concept was a sheltering perimeter block which protects the estate from traffic noise and creates a micro climate, with low-rise housing in its lee.

The modular metric facing brick of 290mm x 90mm x 65mm was developed by Crossley and Sons in County Durham, in collaboration with the City of Newcastle. When mortared, it forms a 12-inch by 4-inch by 3-inch unit. The inventiveness of the decoration, developed following the relatively muted pilot scheme at Janet Square, marks Byker out from other post-war housing for bringing the humane concepts of romantic pragmatism with its neo-vernacular details and materials to public housing in a unique way. It is probably also the greatest achievement of this important and idiosyncratic international architect. As Architectural Design observed in June 1975, if there is something marvellously lighthearted about the design, this is the topographical keynote of the new Byker.