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Previously named the Ferry Boat Hotel, the Alum Ale House is a Grade II Listed Building known as 'Alum House Ham (Tyne Dock Engineering Co. Ltd.)'. The 'ham' in the name refers to an old landing place on the River Tyne. Alum shale was brought in from around Whitby for the local chemical industry, first recorded around 1720. It was landed at the ‘ham’, which at various times over the centuries has also been a landing point for scullerboats and a site for boat building and sail making.

Not always a pub, it was previously used by the Home Guard during the Second World War, as offices of Tyne Dock Engineering and by a furnishing company. It is reputed to be haunted by a variety of its past incumbents and visitors.
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The Alum House is the oldest licensed premises in South Shields. Some parts of the building date back to the seventeenth century and the quaint and higgledy-piggledy layout of the interior reflects its antiquity. The alehouse stood on what was originally Alum Ham, the public landing place where scullermen once gathered to row passengers across the Tyne. The river was more of a thoroughfare in those days than a barrier, and intercourse between North and South Shields was much more frequent.
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