Interesting to read that the place name has previously been documented with the ending –tun! I've long suspected that the Geordie dialect stems from Old Norse and, according to the oracle (Wikipedia) 'ton' is usually a corruption of 'tun', which meant farm or hamlet. The oracle is probably right as tún, in icelandic means 'a fenced in piece of land around a dwelling´ (Isländsk/Svensk Ordbok Rabén Prisma 7th edition 1994). The language of Iceland, which has developed from Old Norse, has ch