Sunderland

Sunderland
Sunderland
	Coat of arms of Sunderland City Council
	Sunderland Location within Tyne and Wear
Population	277,962 (2016 Office for National Statistics)
OS grid reference	[NZ395575 NZ395575]
• London	240 mi (387 km) SSE
Metropolitan borough	Sunderland;
Metropolitan county	Tyne and Wear;
Region	North East;
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	SUNDERLAND
Postcode district	SR1, SR2, SR3, SR4, SR5, SR6, SR9
Dialling code	0191
Police	Northumbria
Fire	Tyne and Wear
Ambulance	North East
UK Parliament	Sunderland South; Sunderland North;
	List of places UK England Tyne and Wear 54°54′22″N 1°22′52″W / 54.9061°N 1.38113°W

Sunderland is in North East England. It was a county borough, and is now part of the City of Sunderland in Tyne and Wear. It sits at the mouth of the River Wear.

Sunderland started as three small villages:

Monkwearmouth was created in 674 when Saint Benedict Biscop started a monastery. Monkwearmouth is on the north side of the river.
Bishopwearmouth was founded in 930. It is on the south side of the river.
Sunderland, at the mouth of the river was a small fishing village. It was given a charter in 1179. The charter gave the people of the small town some rights which people outside the town did not have.

Sunderland grew as a port, mostly selling coal and salt. In the 1300s people began to build ships along the river bank. By 1835, the port of Sunderland was so important that its name was used when the three old villages became a borough. Sunderland became a city in 1992.

A person born in Sunderland is sometimes called a Mackem.

History

Early history

In 674, Benedict Biscop built the Wearmouth (St. Peter's) monastery. He was given the land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria. Biscop's monastery was the first monastery built of stone in Northumbria. Biscop brought glass makers from France. This was the start of glass making in Britain.

In 686, the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth monastery and its other site in Jarrow became very important places of learning in Anglo-Saxon England. The library had about 300 books; all of them were hand written and painted.

The Codex Amiatinus, was written and painted at the monastery and was probably worked on by Bede who was born at Wearmouth in 673. Bede wrote the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731. This is why he is often called The father of English history. In the late eighth century, the Vikings began to raid the coast, and by the middle of the ninth century, the monastery had been abandoned.

In 930, King Athelstan of England gave the land on the south bank of the river to the Bishop of Durham. This is why the area is still called Bishopwearmouth.^[1]

By 1100, the Bishopwearmouth parish included a small fishing village at the mouth of the river (modern day East End) known as 'Soender-land', or Asunder-land which became Sunderland.^[2] This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham.

By 1346, ships were being built at Wearmouth. The merchant Thomas Menville started building ships so he could transport the things he wanted to sell.

In 1589, salt making started in Sunderland. Large vats, called ‘’panns’’, of seawater were put on coal fires. When the water boiled, the salt was left behind. This is known as salt panning. Today, the road leading to where the pans were is still called Pann's Bank. It is on the river bank near the city centre. As more coal was needed to heat the salt pans, coal mining started in the area. Only poor quality coal was used in salt panning; the best coal was sold and shipped out of the town. This is why the port began to grow. This put Sunderland in competition for the first time with its coal-trading neighbour Newcastle.

17th and 18th centuries

Before the English Civil War in 1642, King Charles I said Newcastle could be the only town in the east of England which could send coal by ship. This had a big impact on Sunderland, which was selling more and more coal. This created resentment towards Newcastle and towards the idea of having a king. When the civil war began, the mainly Protestant Sunderland sided with Parliament against the mostly Catholic Newcastle. This was good for Sunderland's business, because Parliament blockaded (blocked) the Tyne. This stopped the Newcastle coal trade and allowed the Sunderland coal trade to grow. When an army from Scotland came to fight the King, its base was set up in Sunderland.

The River Wear was not very deep, so the coal had to be loaded onto big boats called keels and taken downriver to the coal ships which were called colliers.

In 1719, Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth were too big for the only parish church, which was in Bishopwearmouth. A new parish of Sunderland was created and Holy Trinity, Sunderland parish church was built. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had started to join up. This was because of the success of the port of Sunderland as well as the salt panning and the shipbuilding along the banks of the Wear. Around this time, Sunderland was also known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.^[3]

19th century

Cholera

Local government was divided between the three churches (Holy Trinity, Sunderland, St. Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St. Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth). When cholera broke out in 1831, the "select vestrymen", as the church councillors were called, did not know what to do about the epidemic. Many were frightened to say that a disease has started because it might stop their businesses from making money. They printed notices which said there was no disease in the town, and saying that the doctors who said that there was disease did not know what they were talking about.

Sunderland was a big trading port at the time. It was the first British town to be affected by 'Indian cholera' epidemic.^[4] The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put under quarantine, so that people could not leave the town. The port was blockaded, so that ships could not spread the disease to other ports. But in December of that year, cholera was in Gateshead and it spread across the country, killing about 32,000 people.

Jack Crawford was one of the first to die in the epidemic. There are two statues honouring Jack, one in Mowbray Park near the Civic Centre, and the other next to Holy Trinity Church.

Sunderland got its first Member of Parliament after the Reform Act of 1832, and the Borough of Sunderland was created in 1836, although impatient citizens elected Andrew White to be Mayor in December 1835.

Robert Rawlinson was sent to Sunderland in February 1850 by the General Board of Health. His report showed the problems because there was no sewage system or drains.^[5]

Bridges

The river at Sunderland is in a narrow valley, and the town grew up on plateaus high above the river. This meant it never had the problem of allowing people to cross the river without stopping high masted vessels. Rowland Burdon MP pushed for the Wearmouth Bridge, which was built in 1796. It was the second iron bridge ever built. Only the famous Iron Bridge itself is older, but Wearmouth bridge was over twice as long and only three-quarters the weight of the Iron Bridge. Wearmouth Bridge was the biggest single span bridge in the world.^[6] Farther up the river, another bridge, the Queen Alexandra Bridge, was built in 1910, linking the areas of Pallion and Southwick.^[7] It was designed for trains to run across, too, but the railway section was never completed.

Victoria Hall Disaster

The Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. On 16 June 1883, 183 children died.^[8] During a variety show, children rushed down the stairs for treats.^[9] At the bottom of the staircase, the door only opened inward and was bolted so that only one child at a time could get through.^[10] The children pushed down the stairs to the door. Those at the front were trapped, and were crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

The Victoria Hall disaster is still the worst of its kind in Britain.^[11] A memorial statue, which is a crying mother holding a dead child, is now back in Mowbray Park with a protective canopy.^[12] The newspaper reports of the tragedy were so shocking that an inquiry was set up. This committee said that public buildings should have outward opening emergency exits. This led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law still remains in full force to this day. The Victoria Hall was used until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.^[13]

20th century to present

As the traditional industries have declined, electronics, chemicals, and paper making have replaced them. Some of these new industries, are in Washington, which has more space to allow purpose built factories. The Nissan car plant and the nearby North East Aircraft Museum are on the site of the old Sunderland Airport.

Since 1990, industries along the banks of the Wear have changed a lot. Housing, shopping parks and business centres have been built where the shipbuilding yards were. The National Glass Centre is also there, next to the University of Sunderland’s new "St Peter’s Campus". On the south side of the river, the old Vaux Brewery site has been cleared so that new houses, shops and offices can be built close to the city centre.

Sunderland was the one of the most heavily bombed areas in England during World War II.^[14] As a result, much of the town centre was rebuilt in a boring concrete style. But some fine old buildings remain. These include Holy Trinity, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St. Michaels's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St. Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from 674 AD, and was the original monastery. St. Andrew's Roker, so-called "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill.

Civic history

Sunderland was made a municipal borough of County Durham in 1835. Under the Local Government Act 1888, it was given further status as a county borough with independence from county council control. In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, the county borough was abolished and its area combined with that of other districts to form the Metropolitan Borough of Sunderland in Tyne and Wear. See City of Sunderland.

Motto

Sunderland has the motto of Nil Desperandum Auspice Deo. This means Never Despair, Trust In God

Geography

Much of the city is on a low range of hills running parallel to the coast. On average, it is around 80 metres above sea level. Sunderland is divided by the River Wear which passes through the middle of the city in a deep valley, part of which is known as the Hylton gorge. The only two road bridges connecting the north and south halves of the City are the Queen Alexandra Bridge at Pallion and the Wearmouth Bridge just to the north of the City centre. A third bridge carries the A19 trunk road over the Wear to the West of the City.

Most of the suburbs of Sunderland are west of the city centre with 70% of its population living on the south side of the river and 30% on the north side. The city extends to the seafront at Hendon and Ryhope (on the south) and Seaburn (on the north).

The area is part of the Anglican Diocese of Durham. It has been in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle since the Catholic bishops returned in 1850.

Alphabetical street naming of suburbs

Some Sunderland suburbs have most streets beginning with the same letter:

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]