1-18 With Attached Garden Fences

Ruddock Square comprises four terraces of houses and flats built between 1976 and 1978 as part of the Byker development, designed by Ralph Erskine's Arkitektkontor with site architect Vernon Gracie. The construction used buff metric modular brick on a timber frame, with red and orange brick detailing corner blocks and the end wall of numbers 4 and 5, which forms a prominent corner to Raby Street. The roofs are monopitch and constructed from metal, supported by plywood box beam purlins. The buildings are two storeys high. Most houses feature sliding timber windows with aluminium opening lights, and timber doors with glazed panels, although many doors have been renewed in hardwood. Notable features include bird boxes to numbers 3 and 4, a projecting first-floor timber oriel and orange brick end wall to numbers 4 and 5, and projecting dark timber porches. Courtyard elevations incorporate brown weatherboarding, while numbers 9 and 12 have projecting porches. Numbers 7 to 14 have projecting brick and blue weatherboarded porches fronting Bolam Way, under green metal roofs with red doors. Numbers 14 to 18 continue the perimeter line defined by Cushat Close and Merle Gardens, with detailing including red brick, dark weatherboarded eaves marked by red vertical bands, and a bird box to number 15. A carriageway arch, formed by timber heating pipe casing, links numbers 15 and 14, and a similar link connects numbers 18 and 1. Raised gardens are present at the front of numbers 1 to 4 and at the rear of numbers 5 and 6, with a timber pergola. Ruddock Square sits on the south-west corner of the larger Byker development. For historical and source information, see entries for numbers 1-75 Dunn Terrace.