Byker Hill is a traditional English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 folk song

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 about coal miners that has been performed by many contemporary acts. There are at least two different tunes to which the song is sung.

Byker Hill is in the East end of Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

, as is the adjoining district of Walker

Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne

Walker is a residential suburb and electoral ward just east of the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Walker's name is a hybrid of Old English and Viking Norse, "Wall-kjerr", where "kjerr" is Norse for "marshy woodland"...

, also mentioned in the song. "Byker Hill and Walker Shore, Collier lads for ever more"

Versions of Byker Hill

• Martin Carthy
  Martin Carthy
  Martin Carthy MBE is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and later artists such as Richard Thompson since he emerged as a young musician in the early days...
  
  
• Dave Swarbrick
  Dave Swarbrick
  Dave Swarbrick is an English folk musician and singer-songwriter. He has been described by Ashley Hutchings as 'the most influential [British] fiddle player bar none' and his style has been copied or developed by almost every British, and many World folk violin players that have followed him...
  
  
• Tempest
  Tempest (band)
  Tempest is a Celtic rock band from the San Francisco Bay Area, based in Oakland, California. They fuse together the traditional Celtic music with Norwegian and European folk, American folk, and progressive rock....
  
   - on Shapeshifter, re-released on Prime Cuts (Tempest album)
• Dave Van Ronk
  Dave Van Ronk
  Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
  
   - on Going Back To Brooklyn
  Going Back to Brooklyn
  Going Back to Brooklyn is an album by American folk and blues singer Dave Van Ronk, released in 1994.Although Van Ronk was primarily an interpretive singer of traditional folk and blues songs along with covers of the songs of others, he still wrote a number of songs over his long career...
  
   (as Luang Prabang
  Luang Prabang (song)
  Luang Prabang is a song written by Dave Van Ronk, originally recorded by Patrick Sky for his album Songs That Made America Famous . Van Ronk recorded a version himself for Going Back To Brooklyn in 1994. It is named for the city Luang Prabang in Laos. It is one of the few songs Van Ronk wrote himself...
  
  )
• Patrick Sky
  Patrick Sky
  Patrick Sky is a musician, singer and songwriter of Irish and Native American ancestry...
  
   - on Songs That Made America Famous
  Songs That Made America Famous
  Songs That Made America Famous is a Patrick Sky album released on Adelphi Records in 1973. Sky recorded the album in 1971 but had difficulty finding a label to release it, as the satirical lyrics are explicit.-Side One:#"Fight for Liberation"...
  
   (as Luang Prabang
  Luang Prabang (song)
  Luang Prabang is a song written by Dave Van Ronk, originally recorded by Patrick Sky for his album Songs That Made America Famous . Van Ronk recorded a version himself for Going Back To Brooklyn in 1994. It is named for the city Luang Prabang in Laos. It is one of the few songs Van Ronk wrote himself...
  
  )
• The Barely Works - on The Big Beat (album)
  The Big Beat (album)
  The Big Beat is an album recorded by Holloee Poloy and Edyta Bartosiewicz, which marks the beginning of Edyta's musical career. It was never released on a CD and is now very hard to get.-Track listing:# Cars# See-saw# True Love & Confusion...
  
  
• The Imagined Village
  The Imagined Village
  The Imagined Village is a folk musical project founded by Simon Emmerson of the Afro Celt Sound System. It is intended to produce modern folk music that represents modern multiculturalism in the United Kingdom and as such, features musicians from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds...
  
  
• Cottars - on Forerunner (album)
  Forerunner (album)
  -Track listing:# Waterlily – 4:29# Miss Casey Medley – 1:59#* Miss Casey's Jig ...
  
  
• The Young Tradition
  The Young Tradition
  The Young Tradition were a British folk group of the 1960s, formed by Peter Bellamy, Royston Wood and Heather Wood. They recorded three albums of mainly traditional British folk music, sung in arrangements for their three unaccompanied voices.-Biography:...
  
  - on Galleries (album)