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Two online accounting services can help you keep your books in order.

  

Have you ever written a check and paused for a moment to mentally check your bank account to make sure there were sufficient funds in the account for the check to clear? I have, and I’m guessing you have too. Keeping a...

 

www.810tax.com/saving-money-in-your-startup-part-5/

About us: QuickBooks is accounting software that is geared mainly for small and medium-sized businesses. Due it advanced and iconic features, it has become a prior choice of many business owners. With QuickBooks, you can:

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Dial QuickBooks Technical Support Phone Number 1-855-236-7529 and get immediate support for errors

Being an exclusive product, QuickBooks has established a prominent space in the accounting world. Despite this, it has lots of bugs and errors, which can create an unwanted interruption in your work. To fix these errors, dial QuickBooks Technical Support Phone Number 1-855-236-7529 and get prompt guidance for your queries. We offer help for:

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QuickBooks Technical Support Phone Number: 1-855-236-7529

       

The latest report by IMARC Group, titled “Workspace as a Service Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2020-2025,” finds that the global workspace as a service market size reached US$ 4.71 Billion in 2019. Workspace as a service (WaaS) is a type of virtual desktop that provides access to office applications and data to employees at any time regardless of their geographical location. Employees can access WaaS platforms using various devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. These solutions include all the office-related facilities, like backup capabilities, productivity apps such as Office 365, and anti-virus and accounting software. WaaS is the latest step in transforming office applications from on-premises (software, servers and workstations) to cloud-based as a service solution. It is generally adopted by small businesses that cannot afford internal resources and infrastructure to handle IT services on their own.

 

Want more information about Workspace as a Service Market: www.imarcgroup.com/workspace-as-a-service-market

 

Request a free report sample: www.imarcgroup.com/workspace-as-a-service-market/requests...

 

Contact US:

 

IMARC Group

30 N Gould St, Ste R

Sheridan, WY 82801, USA

Website: www.imarcgroup.com

Email: sales@imarcgroup.com

USA: +1-631-791-1145

Follow us on twitter: @imarcglobal

When it comes to starting your own small business the only thing that matters most of the time is the bottom line. After exhausting your resources building up your inventory it can be horrible to realize you still need accounting software inventory management software and graphics software. Luckily these are things that you don't always have to pay for.

 

There are a few different ways that you can get free software. The kind you choose will depend on the needs of your business. Many types of software come as freeware, shareware, demoware and sometimes just plain free software. These words are so similar that you might think they are all the same thing but there are a few key differences you should know before making a choice on what to download.

 

Demoware is probably the most common type of free software. It might also be called trial ware. The meaning is just as it sounds. This is commercial software that you download for a limited time as a demo or trial. With this type of free software you will most likely get to use the software in its complete form but it will be deactivated after a set amount of time unless you pay for it. This is good for a start up business that might just need a little time to come up with the funds to purchase their software.

 

Another form of free software is shareware. Shareware is another form of trial ware. It is usually downloaded from a website or given away on a CD in order to allow customers to try the program and eventually buy the full program. Shareware usually is downloaded with limited script which means that certain features of the program are available only after purchase. This is a great way to decide if you really need a program before you buy it.

 

Freeware is the last form of free software. Freeware is often available for download from a software directory and comes with fully functioning scripts for an unlimited time. Freeware is not a trial offer and there is never any obligation to pay. Freeware is a great way to get a program that you need but just cannot afford to pay for.

 

Free software can be a life saver for many young businesses by saving hundreds of dollars in start up costs. If you are interested in finding free programs for your business you can look for a software directory online such as http://freesoftwaredirectory.net/softwaredirectory/

Back by popular demand to feed your inner curiosity, the fourth annual Startup Crawl features 15 of the hottest startup pads in Denver. Participants will rendezvous at Basecamp to embark on a route throughout Downtown Denver stopping at 15 quintessential Denver startups to eat, drink, and celebrate our homegrown tech culture. The crawl gives technologists a chance to go behind the scenes and experience the company culture first hand. Stay tuned for inclusions, participating companies, and interactive components.

 

View an interactive map here

 

Crawl Stops include:

 

CHOOZLE 2245 Curtis Street Suite 200

Commercial Tribe 1444 Wazee St., Suite 130

FullContact Inc 1755 Blake St, Suite 450

GoSpotCheck 1520 Market St Fl 2

Ibotta, Inc. 1900 16th Street Suite 400

iTriage/Aetna 1515 Wynkoop

Parkifi 1321 15th St

PaySimple 1515 Wynkoop #250

Ping Identity 1001 17th Street, Ste: 100

SendGrid 1451 Larimer Street, 3rd Floor

Signpost 2363 Blake St

thoughtbot 1600 Champa St, Suite 340

Wayin 1625 Blake St

Zayo Group 1621 18th St

Zomato 1726 Champa St., Suite 100

This year we’re upping the stakes with a contest. Stop at 5 or more companies and be entered to win a slew of startup prizes at Built In Brews after the crawl. Craftsy reps will be stamping your maps at each location to prove your journey.

 

Swing by Basecamp at 3pm to start the crawl, pick up your crawl map/bing card, enjoy a beer and some music!

 

Sponsored by: Xero is beautiful, easy-to-use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. Business owners enjoy a complete solution with payroll, inventory, countless educational resources and more. In fact, Xero makes being in business even better. This begins with free 24/7 support and seamless integration with over 400 third-party tools, including advanced solutions for CRM, point-of-sale, time tracking, ecommerce, inventory and more. It’s no wonder that Xero has 540,000+ paying customers in more than 180 countries – and was ranked No. 1 by Forbes as the World's Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.

 

Photography by 23rd Studios, 23rdstudios.com for permission to use photos - info@23rdstudios.com

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Tyne and Wear is a ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The county is largely urbanised. It had a population of 1.14 million in 2021. After Newcastle (300,125) the largest settlements are the city of Sunderland (170,134), Gateshead (120,046), and South Shields (75,337). Nearly all of the county's settlements belong to either the Tyneside or Wearside conurbations, the latter of which also extends into County Durham. Tyne and Wear contains five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and is covered by two combined authorities, North of Tyne and North East. The county was established in 1974 and was historically part of Northumberland and County Durham, with the River Tyne forming the border between the two.

 

The most notable geographic features of the county are the River Tyne and River Wear, after which it is named and along which its major settlements developed. The county is also notable for its coastline to the North Sea in the east, which is characterised by tall limestone cliffs and wide beaches.

 

In the late 600s and into the 700s Saint Bede lived as a monk at the monastery of St. Peter and of St. Paul writing histories of the Early Middle Ages including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

 

Roughly 150 years ago, in the village of Marsden in South Shields, Souter Lighthouse was built, the first electric structure of this type.

 

The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland as county boroughs (Newcastle had "county corporate" status as the "County and Town of Newcastle upon Tyne" since 1400). Tynemouth joined them in 1904. Between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland.

 

The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, when a Royal Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Local Government on Tyneside was appointed. The three commissioners were to examine the system of local government in the areas of local government north and south of the river Tyne from the sea to the boundary of the Rural District of Castle Ward and Hexham in the County of Northumberland and to the Western boundary of the County of Durham, to consider what changes, if any, should be made in the existing arrangements with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency, and to make recommendations.

 

The report of the Royal Commission, published in 1937, recommended the establishment of a Regional Council for Northumberland and Tyneside (to be called the "Northumberland Regional Council") to administer services that needed to be exercised over a wide area, with a second tier of smaller units for other local-government purposes. The second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status. Within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs.

 

A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, Hebburn and Newburn into a single "county borough of Newcastle-on-Tyneside". The 1937 proposals never came into operation: local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one.

 

Tyneside (excluding Sunderland) was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958. The Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. This was not implemented. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, which would have set up a separate East Durham unitary authority.

 

The White Paper that led to the Local Government Act 1972 proposed as "area 2" a metropolitan county including Newcastle and Sunderland, extending as far south down the coast as Seaham and Easington, and bordering "area 4" (which would become Tees Valley). The Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name "Tyneside". The name "Tyneside" proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to "Tyne and Wear" at the request of Sunderland County Borough Council.

 

Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle and inland Durham in County Durham around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Sunderland. There are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate.

 

Tyne and Wear contains green belt interspersed throughout the county, mainly on the fringes of the Tyneside/Wearside conurbation. There is also an inter-urban line of belt helping to keep the districts of South Tyneside, Gateshead, and Sunderland separated. It was first drawn up from the 1950s. All the county's districts contain some portion of belt.

 

Although Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy. Through its passenger transport executive, known as Nexus, it owns and operates the Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system, and the Shields ferry service and the Tyne Tunnel, linking communities on either side of the River Tyne. Also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services (including taxis) and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. Nexus has been an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee since November 2018.

 

Other joint bodies include the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, which was created from the merger of the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and Tyne and Wear Museums. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils. In addition the Northumbria Police force covers Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

 

There have been occasional calls for Tyne and Wear to be abolished and the traditional border between Northumberland and County Durham to be restored.

 

Tyne and Wear is divided into 12 Parliamentary constituencies. Historically, the area has been a Labour stronghold; South Shields is the only Parliamentary constituency that has never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.

 

Newcastle and Sunderland are known for declaring their election results early on election night. Therefore, they frequently give the first indication of nationwide trends. An example of this was at the 2016 European Union referendum. Newcastle was the first large city to declare, and 50.6% of voters voted to Remain; this proportion was far lower than predicted by experts. Sunderland declared soon after and gave a 62% vote to Leave, much higher than expected. These two results were seen as an early sign that the United Kingdom had voted to Leave.

 

Offshore Group Newcastle make oil platforms. Sage Group, who produce accounting software, are based at Hazlerigg at the northern end of the Newcastle bypass. Northern Rock, which became a bank in 1997 and was taken over by Virgin Money in November 2011, and the Newcastle Building Society are based in Gosforth. The Gosforth-based bakery Greggs now has over 1,500 shops. The Balliol Business Park in Longbenton contains Procter & Gamble research and global business centres and a tax credits call centre for HMRC, and is the former home of Findus UK. The Government National Insurance Contributions Office in Longbenton, demolished and replaced in 2000, had a 1 mile (1.6 km) long corridor.

 

Be-Ro and the Go-Ahead Group bus company are in central Newcastle. Nestlé use the former Rowntrees chocolate factory on the east of the A1. BAE Systems Land & Armaments in Scotswood, formerly Vickers-Armstrongs, is the main producer of British Army tanks such as the Challenger 2. A Rolls-Royce apprentice training site is next door.[18] Siemens Energy Service Fossil make steam turbines at the CA Parsons Works in South Heaton. Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and developed an important local company. Domestos, a product whose main ingredient is sodium hypochlorite, was originated in Newcastle in 1929 by William Handley, and was distributed from the area for many years.

 

Clarke Chapman is next to the A167 in Gateshead. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Scottish & Newcastle was the largest UK-owned brewery until it was bought by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008, and produced Newcastle Brown Ale at the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston until production moved to Tadcaster in September 2010. At Team Valley are De La Rue, with their largest banknote printing facility, and Myson Radiators, the second largest in the UK market. Petards make surveillance equipment including ANPR cameras, and its Joyce-Loebl division makes electronic warfare systems and countermeasure dispensing systems such as the AN/ALE-47. Sevcon, an international company formed from a part of Smith Electric, is a world leader in electric vehicle controls. AEI Cables and Komatsu UK construction equipment at Birtley.

 

J. Barbour & Sons make outdoor clothing in Simonside, Jarrow. SAFT Batteries make primary lithium batteries on the Tyne in South Shields. Bellway plc houses is in Seaton Burn in North Tyneside. Cobalt Business Park, the largest office park in the UK, is at Wallsend, on the former site of Atmel, and is the home of North Tyneside Council. Swan Hunter until 2006 made ships in Wallsend, and still designs ships. Soil Machine Dynamics in Wallsend on the Tyne makes Remotely operated underwater vehicles, and its Ultra Trencher 1 is the world's largest submersible robot.

 

The car dealership Evans Halshaw is in Sunderland. The car factory owned by Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK between North Hylton and Washington is the largest in the UK. Grundfos, the world's leading pump manufacturer, builds pumps in Sunderland. Calsonic Kansei UK, formerly Magna, make automotive instrument panels and car trim at the Pennywell Industrial Estate. Gestamp UK make automotive components. Smith Electric Vehicles originated in Washington. The LG Electronics microwave oven factory opened in 1989, closed in May 2004, and later became the site of the Tanfield Group. Goodyear Dunlop had their only UK car tyre factory next to the Tanfield site until its 2006 closure. BAE Systems Global Combat Systems moved to a new £75 million factory at the former Goodyear site in 2011, where they make large calibre ammunition for tanks and artillery.

 

The government's child benefit office is in Washington. Liebherr build cranes next to the Wear at Deptford. The outdoor clothing company Berghaus is in Castletown. Vaux Breweries, who owned Swallow Hotels, closed in 1999. ScS Sofas are on Borough Road. There are many call centres in Sunderland, notably EDF Energy at the Doxford International Business Park, which is also the home of the headquarters of the large international transport company Arriva and Nike UK. Rolls-Royce planned to move their production of fan and turbine discs to BAE Systems' new site in 2016.

SUNDERLAND'S iconic new dray horses statue will stand on Keel Square, after a planning application was approved for the site of the life-sized piece.

 

Created by Ray Lonsdale to honour the former Vaux Brewery, the statue, made from corten steel, has secured its place on the corner of Keel Square, looking over the road to the transforming riverside.

 

Commissioned by Sunderland City Council, the public art, entitled 'Gan Canny', is one of three designed by Ray - who created Seaham's famous Tommy. The artist spent 14 months creating the stunning piece, and a further 19 months for the other two sculptures.

 

Gan Canny is expected to be in position by early December, with the two further pieces yet to be revealed but expected to be installed separately at different sites across the Riverside Sunderland development.

 

Ray, whose family are from Sunderland, still has a strong connection to the city and said it has been a privilege and challenge to create the artwork of an iconic city sight that he still remembers himself.

 

Ray said: "When I was first approached by the council to work on this piece, I just felt that it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I know how much the dray horses meant to people and it is really nice to be able to create something that so many people have a positive sentiment about."

 

"I am just so flattered though, to have been given the chance to create something that celebrates the past in a city that is focused now on the future. It's easy to look back at what we had, but the fact that this piece will stand in a part of the city that is literally looking over at the Vaux site, which is quickly transforming into an impressive new place, means it really is about giving a nod to the past without dwelling on it."

 

A layer of oxide will form over the piece when its surface is exposed to the elements, producing a 'rust-like' coating that helps it blend into the environment it is in. It captures two men riding the dray horses, with a cart full of Vaux beer on the back and includes details like the spokes of the wheels, as well as a realistic recreation of a bucket carrying sculpted horse mess that hangs on the side of the cart. Crates of Vaux even contain sculpted bottles.

 

The piece will stand on the North West corner of Keel Square, looking across the road to the Vaux site, which is now part of the Riverside Sunderland quarter, an area undergoing rapid change with £350m worth of development projects underway on the site right now.

 

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Tyne and Wear is a ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The county is largely urbanised. It had a population of 1.14 million in 2021. After Newcastle (300,125) the largest settlements are the city of Sunderland (170,134), Gateshead (120,046), and South Shields (75,337). Nearly all of the county's settlements belong to either the Tyneside or Wearside conurbations, the latter of which also extends into County Durham. Tyne and Wear contains five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and is covered by two combined authorities, North of Tyne and North East. The county was established in 1974 and was historically part of Northumberland and County Durham, with the River Tyne forming the border between the two.

 

The most notable geographic features of the county are the River Tyne and River Wear, after which it is named and along which its major settlements developed. The county is also notable for its coastline to the North Sea in the east, which is characterised by tall limestone cliffs and wide beaches.

 

In the late 600s and into the 700s Saint Bede lived as a monk at the monastery of St. Peter and of St. Paul writing histories of the Early Middle Ages including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

 

Roughly 150 years ago, in the village of Marsden in South Shields, Souter Lighthouse was built, the first electric structure of this type.

 

The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland as county boroughs (Newcastle had "county corporate" status as the "County and Town of Newcastle upon Tyne" since 1400). Tynemouth joined them in 1904. Between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland.

 

The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, when a Royal Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Local Government on Tyneside was appointed. The three commissioners were to examine the system of local government in the areas of local government north and south of the river Tyne from the sea to the boundary of the Rural District of Castle Ward and Hexham in the County of Northumberland and to the Western boundary of the County of Durham, to consider what changes, if any, should be made in the existing arrangements with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency, and to make recommendations.

 

The report of the Royal Commission, published in 1937, recommended the establishment of a Regional Council for Northumberland and Tyneside (to be called the "Northumberland Regional Council") to administer services that needed to be exercised over a wide area, with a second tier of smaller units for other local-government purposes. The second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status. Within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs.

 

A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, Hebburn and Newburn into a single "county borough of Newcastle-on-Tyneside". The 1937 proposals never came into operation: local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one.

 

Tyneside (excluding Sunderland) was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958. The Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. This was not implemented. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, which would have set up a separate East Durham unitary authority.

 

The White Paper that led to the Local Government Act 1972 proposed as "area 2" a metropolitan county including Newcastle and Sunderland, extending as far south down the coast as Seaham and Easington, and bordering "area 4" (which would become Tees Valley). The Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name "Tyneside". The name "Tyneside" proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to "Tyne and Wear" at the request of Sunderland County Borough Council.

 

Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle and inland Durham in County Durham around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Sunderland. There are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate.

 

Tyne and Wear contains green belt interspersed throughout the county, mainly on the fringes of the Tyneside/Wearside conurbation. There is also an inter-urban line of belt helping to keep the districts of South Tyneside, Gateshead, and Sunderland separated. It was first drawn up from the 1950s. All the county's districts contain some portion of belt.

 

Although Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy. Through its passenger transport executive, known as Nexus, it owns and operates the Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system, and the Shields ferry service and the Tyne Tunnel, linking communities on either side of the River Tyne. Also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services (including taxis) and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. Nexus has been an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee since November 2018.

 

Other joint bodies include the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, which was created from the merger of the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and Tyne and Wear Museums. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils. In addition the Northumbria Police force covers Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

 

There have been occasional calls for Tyne and Wear to be abolished and the traditional border between Northumberland and County Durham to be restored.

 

Tyne and Wear is divided into 12 Parliamentary constituencies. Historically, the area has been a Labour stronghold; South Shields is the only Parliamentary constituency that has never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.

 

Newcastle and Sunderland are known for declaring their election results early on election night. Therefore, they frequently give the first indication of nationwide trends. An example of this was at the 2016 European Union referendum. Newcastle was the first large city to declare, and 50.6% of voters voted to Remain; this proportion was far lower than predicted by experts. Sunderland declared soon after and gave a 62% vote to Leave, much higher than expected. These two results were seen as an early sign that the United Kingdom had voted to Leave.

 

Offshore Group Newcastle make oil platforms. Sage Group, who produce accounting software, are based at Hazlerigg at the northern end of the Newcastle bypass. Northern Rock, which became a bank in 1997 and was taken over by Virgin Money in November 2011, and the Newcastle Building Society are based in Gosforth. The Gosforth-based bakery Greggs now has over 1,500 shops. The Balliol Business Park in Longbenton contains Procter & Gamble research and global business centres and a tax credits call centre for HMRC, and is the former home of Findus UK. The Government National Insurance Contributions Office in Longbenton, demolished and replaced in 2000, had a 1 mile (1.6 km) long corridor.

 

Be-Ro and the Go-Ahead Group bus company are in central Newcastle. Nestlé use the former Rowntrees chocolate factory on the east of the A1. BAE Systems Land & Armaments in Scotswood, formerly Vickers-Armstrongs, is the main producer of British Army tanks such as the Challenger 2. A Rolls-Royce apprentice training site is next door.[18] Siemens Energy Service Fossil make steam turbines at the CA Parsons Works in South Heaton. Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and developed an important local company. Domestos, a product whose main ingredient is sodium hypochlorite, was originated in Newcastle in 1929 by William Handley, and was distributed from the area for many years.

 

Clarke Chapman is next to the A167 in Gateshead. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Scottish & Newcastle was the largest UK-owned brewery until it was bought by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008, and produced Newcastle Brown Ale at the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston until production moved to Tadcaster in September 2010. At Team Valley are De La Rue, with their largest banknote printing facility, and Myson Radiators, the second largest in the UK market. Petards make surveillance equipment including ANPR cameras, and its Joyce-Loebl division makes electronic warfare systems and countermeasure dispensing systems such as the AN/ALE-47. Sevcon, an international company formed from a part of Smith Electric, is a world leader in electric vehicle controls. AEI Cables and Komatsu UK construction equipment at Birtley.

 

J. Barbour & Sons make outdoor clothing in Simonside, Jarrow. SAFT Batteries make primary lithium batteries on the Tyne in South Shields. Bellway plc houses is in Seaton Burn in North Tyneside. Cobalt Business Park, the largest office park in the UK, is at Wallsend, on the former site of Atmel, and is the home of North Tyneside Council. Swan Hunter until 2006 made ships in Wallsend, and still designs ships. Soil Machine Dynamics in Wallsend on the Tyne makes Remotely operated underwater vehicles, and its Ultra Trencher 1 is the world's largest submersible robot.

 

The car dealership Evans Halshaw is in Sunderland. The car factory owned by Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK between North Hylton and Washington is the largest in the UK. Grundfos, the world's leading pump manufacturer, builds pumps in Sunderland. Calsonic Kansei UK, formerly Magna, make automotive instrument panels and car trim at the Pennywell Industrial Estate. Gestamp UK make automotive components. Smith Electric Vehicles originated in Washington. The LG Electronics microwave oven factory opened in 1989, closed in May 2004, and later became the site of the Tanfield Group. Goodyear Dunlop had their only UK car tyre factory next to the Tanfield site until its 2006 closure. BAE Systems Global Combat Systems moved to a new £75 million factory at the former Goodyear site in 2011, where they make large calibre ammunition for tanks and artillery.

 

The government's child benefit office is in Washington. Liebherr build cranes next to the Wear at Deptford. The outdoor clothing company Berghaus is in Castletown. Vaux Breweries, who owned Swallow Hotels, closed in 1999. ScS Sofas are on Borough Road. There are many call centres in Sunderland, notably EDF Energy at the Doxford International Business Park, which is also the home of the headquarters of the large international transport company Arriva and Nike UK. Rolls-Royce planned to move their production of fan and turbine discs to BAE Systems' new site in 2016.

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Tyne and Wear is a ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The county is largely urbanised. It had a population of 1.14 million in 2021. After Newcastle (300,125) the largest settlements are the city of Sunderland (170,134), Gateshead (120,046), and South Shields (75,337). Nearly all of the county's settlements belong to either the Tyneside or Wearside conurbations, the latter of which also extends into County Durham. Tyne and Wear contains five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and is covered by two combined authorities, North of Tyne and North East. The county was established in 1974 and was historically part of Northumberland and County Durham, with the River Tyne forming the border between the two.

 

The most notable geographic features of the county are the River Tyne and River Wear, after which it is named and along which its major settlements developed. The county is also notable for its coastline to the North Sea in the east, which is characterised by tall limestone cliffs and wide beaches.

 

In the late 600s and into the 700s Saint Bede lived as a monk at the monastery of St. Peter and of St. Paul writing histories of the Early Middle Ages including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

 

Roughly 150 years ago, in the village of Marsden in South Shields, Souter Lighthouse was built, the first electric structure of this type.

 

The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland as county boroughs (Newcastle had "county corporate" status as the "County and Town of Newcastle upon Tyne" since 1400). Tynemouth joined them in 1904. Between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland.

 

The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, when a Royal Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Local Government on Tyneside was appointed. The three commissioners were to examine the system of local government in the areas of local government north and south of the river Tyne from the sea to the boundary of the Rural District of Castle Ward and Hexham in the County of Northumberland and to the Western boundary of the County of Durham, to consider what changes, if any, should be made in the existing arrangements with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency, and to make recommendations.

 

The report of the Royal Commission, published in 1937, recommended the establishment of a Regional Council for Northumberland and Tyneside (to be called the "Northumberland Regional Council") to administer services that needed to be exercised over a wide area, with a second tier of smaller units for other local-government purposes. The second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status. Within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs.

 

A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, Hebburn and Newburn into a single "county borough of Newcastle-on-Tyneside". The 1937 proposals never came into operation: local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one.

 

Tyneside (excluding Sunderland) was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958. The Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. This was not implemented. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, which would have set up a separate East Durham unitary authority.

 

The White Paper that led to the Local Government Act 1972 proposed as "area 2" a metropolitan county including Newcastle and Sunderland, extending as far south down the coast as Seaham and Easington, and bordering "area 4" (which would become Tees Valley). The Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name "Tyneside". The name "Tyneside" proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to "Tyne and Wear" at the request of Sunderland County Borough Council.

 

Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle and inland Durham in County Durham around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Sunderland. There are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate.

 

Tyne and Wear contains green belt interspersed throughout the county, mainly on the fringes of the Tyneside/Wearside conurbation. There is also an inter-urban line of belt helping to keep the districts of South Tyneside, Gateshead, and Sunderland separated. It was first drawn up from the 1950s. All the county's districts contain some portion of belt.

 

Although Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy. Through its passenger transport executive, known as Nexus, it owns and operates the Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system, and the Shields ferry service and the Tyne Tunnel, linking communities on either side of the River Tyne. Also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services (including taxis) and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. Nexus has been an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee since November 2018.

 

Other joint bodies include the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, which was created from the merger of the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and Tyne and Wear Museums. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils. In addition the Northumbria Police force covers Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

 

There have been occasional calls for Tyne and Wear to be abolished and the traditional border between Northumberland and County Durham to be restored.

 

Tyne and Wear is divided into 12 Parliamentary constituencies. Historically, the area has been a Labour stronghold; South Shields is the only Parliamentary constituency that has never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.

 

Newcastle and Sunderland are known for declaring their election results early on election night. Therefore, they frequently give the first indication of nationwide trends. An example of this was at the 2016 European Union referendum. Newcastle was the first large city to declare, and 50.6% of voters voted to Remain; this proportion was far lower than predicted by experts. Sunderland declared soon after and gave a 62% vote to Leave, much higher than expected. These two results were seen as an early sign that the United Kingdom had voted to Leave.

 

Offshore Group Newcastle make oil platforms. Sage Group, who produce accounting software, are based at Hazlerigg at the northern end of the Newcastle bypass. Northern Rock, which became a bank in 1997 and was taken over by Virgin Money in November 2011, and the Newcastle Building Society are based in Gosforth. The Gosforth-based bakery Greggs now has over 1,500 shops. The Balliol Business Park in Longbenton contains Procter & Gamble research and global business centres and a tax credits call centre for HMRC, and is the former home of Findus UK. The Government National Insurance Contributions Office in Longbenton, demolished and replaced in 2000, had a 1 mile (1.6 km) long corridor.

 

Be-Ro and the Go-Ahead Group bus company are in central Newcastle. Nestlé use the former Rowntrees chocolate factory on the east of the A1. BAE Systems Land & Armaments in Scotswood, formerly Vickers-Armstrongs, is the main producer of British Army tanks such as the Challenger 2. A Rolls-Royce apprentice training site is next door.[18] Siemens Energy Service Fossil make steam turbines at the CA Parsons Works in South Heaton. Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and developed an important local company. Domestos, a product whose main ingredient is sodium hypochlorite, was originated in Newcastle in 1929 by William Handley, and was distributed from the area for many years.

 

Clarke Chapman is next to the A167 in Gateshead. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Scottish & Newcastle was the largest UK-owned brewery until it was bought by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008, and produced Newcastle Brown Ale at the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston until production moved to Tadcaster in September 2010. At Team Valley are De La Rue, with their largest banknote printing facility, and Myson Radiators, the second largest in the UK market. Petards make surveillance equipment including ANPR cameras, and its Joyce-Loebl division makes electronic warfare systems and countermeasure dispensing systems such as the AN/ALE-47. Sevcon, an international company formed from a part of Smith Electric, is a world leader in electric vehicle controls. AEI Cables and Komatsu UK construction equipment at Birtley.

 

J. Barbour & Sons make outdoor clothing in Simonside, Jarrow. SAFT Batteries make primary lithium batteries on the Tyne in South Shields. Bellway plc houses is in Seaton Burn in North Tyneside. Cobalt Business Park, the largest office park in the UK, is at Wallsend, on the former site of Atmel, and is the home of North Tyneside Council. Swan Hunter until 2006 made ships in Wallsend, and still designs ships. Soil Machine Dynamics in Wallsend on the Tyne makes Remotely operated underwater vehicles, and its Ultra Trencher 1 is the world's largest submersible robot.

 

The car dealership Evans Halshaw is in Sunderland. The car factory owned by Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK between North Hylton and Washington is the largest in the UK. Grundfos, the world's leading pump manufacturer, builds pumps in Sunderland. Calsonic Kansei UK, formerly Magna, make automotive instrument panels and car trim at the Pennywell Industrial Estate. Gestamp UK make automotive components. Smith Electric Vehicles originated in Washington. The LG Electronics microwave oven factory opened in 1989, closed in May 2004, and later became the site of the Tanfield Group. Goodyear Dunlop had their only UK car tyre factory next to the Tanfield site until its 2006 closure. BAE Systems Global Combat Systems moved to a new £75 million factory at the former Goodyear site in 2011, where they make large calibre ammunition for tanks and artillery.

 

The government's child benefit office is in Washington. Liebherr build cranes next to the Wear at Deptford. The outdoor clothing company Berghaus is in Castletown. Vaux Breweries, who owned Swallow Hotels, closed in 1999. ScS Sofas are on Borough Road. There are many call centres in Sunderland, notably EDF Energy at the Doxford International Business Park, which is also the home of the headquarters of the large international transport company Arriva and Nike UK. Rolls-Royce planned to move their production of fan and turbine discs to BAE Systems' new site in 2016.

I have 10+ years of experience in executive and managerial positions, in many types of businesses, including film & television, Internet, real estate, construction & gaming. I have an extensive knowledge & experience in the overall operations of a company, from A/P & A/R auditing & reconciliations, to projecting, budgeting & business planning as well as expensive experience in marketing, video production, content syndication & website management. I am technologically savvy, and proficient on a PC or a Mac and am skillful in a number of computer programs including QuickBooks & Peachtree accounting software, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, I regard myself as an expert in Microsoft Office, especially Excel, and I am very familiar with Drupal & WordPress.

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Cloud or online accounting software is an accounting solution and cloud accounting tool for most businesses. They are far more efficient, cost-effective, and is relatively easier to use as compared to traditional accounting ways. With the online accounting software, there’s no need to worry about taxes, audits and keeping track of all your financial data as well as accounting data that are headed your way.

Image of a calculator, pencil and piece of paper that has the logos of 6 major accounting software types businesses can use in the UK.

 

The QuickBooks Desktop For Mac 2020 ensures modernized reporting and it completely focuses on what matters with flexibility and time-saving insights. The latest reporting structure improves customization and navigation. Other than this improved company snapshot, dark mode, invoice e-payments and bounded check processing are some admirable highlights which make it the best mac compatible accounting software version of the year 2020. To ensure the best outcomes and error-free execution of each and every functionality, there is a smart provision of online assistance. To get the best possible solution, and ensure optimized usage of the accounting software just get in touch with our support staff now. For more visit our website quickhelpbooks.com or call us 1-877-201-2415

 

There is a tremendous rise in the demand for online accounting software. The main reason is that this software helps to monitor the real-time financial data of the business. www.chartaccountancy.com/services/sole-trader/

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More than 700 Post Office branch managers were convicted after Horizon, the faulty accounting software created by Fujitsu, made it look like money was missing from their shops.

 

However, Post Office bosses are still using the Japanese technology firm, with Fujitsu handed a £37 million contract just two months ago to keep data centres powering Horizon running for two more years.

 

On Monday, Kevin Hollinrake, the government minister who oversees the Post Office, vowed to quicken the pace at which sub-postmasters can overturn convictions and get compensation.

 

Mr Hollinrake said in the House of Commons: “The time for quibbling is over. It is a case now of action, action on this day, and delivering that by overturning convictions.”

 

He added that the Government would consider urging Fujitsu to help cover compensation if a public inquiry into the scandal concluded that the firm carried some blame for what happened.

 

Ministers are leaning towards a mass exoneration of all those convicted in the scandal that would speed up the process of convictions being overturned, The Telegraph understands, but are seeking advice from senior judges first before announcements on next steps.

 

Just 93 sub-postmasters have had their convictions quashed and many of them are still awaiting full compensation.

 

Meanwhile, Downing Street said on Monday that Rishi Sunak would “strongly support” a review into whether Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, should be stripped of her CBE.

 

At a press briefing, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was asked whether Fujitsu should pay for some of the compensation owed.

 

The spokesman replied: “I think the culpability of Fujitsu or otherwise is something that’s being examined as part of the independent inquiry process.

 

“So I’m unable to fully opine at this point. But obviously it should not be the taxpayer alone which picks up the tab for Horizon compensation.”

 

The remark comes amid mounting calls for Fujitsu to contribute in some form to the compensation expected.

 

Alan Bates, founder of the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance, told Computer Weekly magazine at the time: “It has been like squeezing blood out of a stone getting compensation for those that have suffered in the scandal, which was caused by the Post Office and Fujitsu, but the government seems happy to continue to throw money at Fujitsu.”

Daily Telegraph

EMERALD SOFT is a global IT trading company dealing with Accounting Softwares , Hardware’s & Web Designing and Web Development. we are passionate about helping businesses of all sizes to achieve their goals by helping them to overcome the day-to- day business challenges, so that they can do the business at an extreme height. Having the commitment, passion and dedication to excel we strive hard to offer the best value propositions to our customers in an accountable way. Our competitive edge is the combined strengths of our people, These strengths give us the advantage of delivering strategic value through operational efficiency, and providing cost effective, accurate, timely solutions.

 

We have accomplished in delivering the optimum solutions and services across UAE in terms of developing the business and functions of different entities and departments of the organizations. One of our main advantages is that our software implementers are highly trained and experienced Software’s. Also our website developers and expertise designers can provide dynamic, responsive, SEO rated designs to our clients that can help them grow their businesses.

  

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EMERALD SOFT is a global IT trading company dealing with Accounting Softwares , Hardware’s & Web Designing and Web Development. we are passionate about helping businesses of all sizes to achieve their goals by helping them to overcome the day-to- day business challenges, so that they can do the business at an extreme height. Having the commitment, passion and dedication to excel we strive hard to offer the best value propositions to our customers in an accountable way. Our competitive edge is the combined strengths of our people, These strengths give us the advantage of delivering strategic value through operational efficiency, and providing cost effective, accurate, timely solutions.

 

We have accomplished in delivering the optimum solutions and services across UAE in terms of developing the business and functions of different entities and departments of the organizations. One of our main advantages is that our software implementers are highly trained and experienced Software’s. Also our website developers and expertise designers can provide dynamic, responsive, SEO rated designs to our clients that can help them grow their businesses.

  

Dedication and team work has been one of our core strengths and we interact with the clientele to give scalable results.

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WinHMS is the hotel management software which was created and published by winsar infosoft. We havehttp://www.winsarinfo.com/products.htm different set of software which can suites with all hotel areas such booking, reservation, payroll and so on.

 

WinHMS is our authorized product of hotel management software. We have different set of software which can suites with all hotel areas such booking, reservation, payroll and so on.

 

Our company is offering three type of property management system based on the hotel size which is WinHMS express, WinHMS Professional and WinHMS enterprise. Like wise we offer the following software

 

WinHMS express - Small hotels and resorts software

 

WinHMS Professional - Medium hotels and resorts software

 

WinHMS enterprise - Large and international hotels software

 

WinMMS - Material Management system

 

WinPOs - Point of sales software

 

WinCRS _ Central reservation system

 

WinMIS - Management information system

 

WinHms booking engine

 

WinSPA - Spa software

 

WinClub - Club software

 

Win Golf _ Golf software,

More visit www.winsarinfo.com/products.htm

Accounting students are trained to analyze, interpret and record financial information. Working with word processing, spreadsheet and accounting software, they learn how to prepare financial statements, tax returns and government forms. They also learn federal and state tax and payroll laws.

 

Adventist world church Secretary G. T. Ng, left, introduces to Annual Council delegates Andrew Kuntaraf, director of the newly-created Office of Membership Accounting Software. The office will use standardized membership accounting software worldwide. The office is part of the Adventist world church Secretariat. [photo: Ansel Oliver]

Access UK Regional Director Gary Bailey taking a rest at the 24/7 user event. Bristol Doubletree by Hilton, February 2011.

 

See our website for more Access UK events.

Hi! My name is Lauri Harman, and I am the Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Pamunkey Regional Library System. I am in the office every week day, except for vacations or sick time. I have two great staff members that work with me, Cindy Harding and Dale Taylor. Cindy works all day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Dale Taylor works from 9 a.m to 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.

My first priority is to take care of the Library Director’s needs and see to it that she has letters, files, reports, paperwork, etc. that she may need on a given day. I also tend to all human resource matters, such as placing help wanted ads and handling the new hire paperwork - from setting up your finger print appointment to getting you your first paycheck. There are many steps in between.

I assist the Branch Managers with any requests they may have, such as time sheets, requests to place new hire ads, an injury report or workers’ compensation situation, and a million other questions that might come up and need discussion. One time someone dumped deer parts behind the Atlee Library (just over the fence and not on our property) and I did the necessary detective work to find the landowners and have them bury the carcasses!! One of my favorite things to think is “Mission Accomplished!”

I oversee the function of the Administrative Office. We process payroll twice each month. We get paychecks and distribute them each pay day. There are approximately 144 employees, so payroll takes about 4 hours to process, and pay checks take an hour to prepare for delivery. We process the mail every day, matching invoices to their packing slips and enter them in our accounting software for payment. We pay bills twice a month. We answer probably 50 phone calls per day and many e-mails. We purchase supplies and fill orders for supplies that are requested by each branch. Can you imagine how much toilet paper and copy paper we order to keep 10 branches and 2 departments with the supplies they need? And they are just two supplies of the hundreds we handle.

We send out the Summer Reading Program supplies as refills are needed for the Programmers.

Basically, we are here to assist you or your Branch Manager in any way that we possibly can. We have come up with ways to recycle, to save money on supplies and purchases so that we do our part to help the library spend its’ budgeted money as responsibly as possible.

If you ever need any supplies, have a payroll issue, or want to ask me a question, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am always happy to help you if I can.

 

Back by popular demand to feed your inner curiosity, the fourth annual Startup Crawl features 15 of the hottest startup pads in Denver. Participants will rendezvous at Basecamp to embark on a route throughout Downtown Denver stopping at 15 quintessential Denver startups to eat, drink, and celebrate our homegrown tech culture. The crawl gives technologists a chance to go behind the scenes and experience the company culture first hand. Stay tuned for inclusions, participating companies, and interactive components.

 

View an interactive map here

 

Crawl Stops include:

 

CHOOZLE 2245 Curtis Street Suite 200

Commercial Tribe 1444 Wazee St., Suite 130

FullContact Inc 1755 Blake St, Suite 450

GoSpotCheck 1520 Market St Fl 2

Ibotta, Inc. 1900 16th Street Suite 400

iTriage/Aetna 1515 Wynkoop

Parkifi 1321 15th St

PaySimple 1515 Wynkoop #250

Ping Identity 1001 17th Street, Ste: 100

SendGrid 1451 Larimer Street, 3rd Floor

Signpost 2363 Blake St

thoughtbot 1600 Champa St, Suite 340

Wayin 1625 Blake St

Zayo Group 1621 18th St

Zomato 1726 Champa St., Suite 100

This year we’re upping the stakes with a contest. Stop at 5 or more companies and be entered to win a slew of startup prizes at Built In Brews after the crawl. Craftsy reps will be stamping your maps at each location to prove your journey.

 

Swing by Basecamp at 3pm to start the crawl, pick up your crawl map/bing card, enjoy a beer and some music!

 

Sponsored by: Xero is beautiful, easy-to-use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. Business owners enjoy a complete solution with payroll, inventory, countless educational resources and more. In fact, Xero makes being in business even better. This begins with free 24/7 support and seamless integration with over 400 third-party tools, including advanced solutions for CRM, point-of-sale, time tracking, ecommerce, inventory and more. It’s no wonder that Xero has 540,000+ paying customers in more than 180 countries – and was ranked No. 1 by Forbes as the World's Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.

 

Photography by 23rd Studios, 23rdstudios.com for permission to use photos - info@23rdstudios.com

Using the Cloud, companies have the ability to reduce the IT cost by 30 percent approximately. Our modern #HRMS systems are a perfect combo of SMAC (Socials, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud) to get maximum returns on investments.

 

Small and medium enterprises that have minimum employees and Multinational companies with thousands of employees find it extremely challenging to keep an organized record of each and every employee.

 

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Great accounting advice from expert chartered accountants given by a company with over 35 years in the business. Whether you’re a small business, family owned, or an individual, Finch Lynton can help you take charge of your finances.

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Disha is an inventory and accounts management systems this software which is highly usable for all kind of business units such as FMCG, Pharmaceutical, Stationery, Garment, Utensil, IT Trader, House Hold Traders, Sanitary & Hardware Traders and many more.

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Jwelly ERP is India's Best jewellery taging software selling Jewellery Software by MMI Softwares with more than 23+ years of Experience, Covering all the aspects - Retail - Wholesale - Manufacturing of Jewellery Business.

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Gabriela Castillo-Ramos is a finance graduate from the University of Houston – Downtown. Gabi has over 8 years experience in Accounting and Financial Services. Her role within carreñogroup and its affiliate companies has been invaluable to our growth with her in-depth accounting, tax and business experience.

 

Gabi specializes in services for small businesses including bookkeeping, payroll and compliance with all tax laws. In addition to her tax experience, Gabi is extremely qualified with the QuickBooks Accounting Software. She assists clients in effectively utilizing it in their own businesses and by providing bookkeeping and payroll services for them. Gabi also provides consulting services to helps businesses with tax services and a wide range of QuickBooks related services including set up, trouble shooting and providing advanced uses of the software.

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Tyne and Wear is a ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The county is largely urbanised. It had a population of 1.14 million in 2021. After Newcastle (300,125) the largest settlements are the city of Sunderland (170,134), Gateshead (120,046), and South Shields (75,337). Nearly all of the county's settlements belong to either the Tyneside or Wearside conurbations, the latter of which also extends into County Durham. Tyne and Wear contains five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and is covered by two combined authorities, North of Tyne and North East. The county was established in 1974 and was historically part of Northumberland and County Durham, with the River Tyne forming the border between the two.

 

The most notable geographic features of the county are the River Tyne and River Wear, after which it is named and along which its major settlements developed. The county is also notable for its coastline to the North Sea in the east, which is characterised by tall limestone cliffs and wide beaches.

 

In the late 600s and into the 700s Saint Bede lived as a monk at the monastery of St. Peter and of St. Paul writing histories of the Early Middle Ages including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

 

Roughly 150 years ago, in the village of Marsden in South Shields, Souter Lighthouse was built, the first electric structure of this type.

 

The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland as county boroughs (Newcastle had "county corporate" status as the "County and Town of Newcastle upon Tyne" since 1400). Tynemouth joined them in 1904. Between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland.

 

The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, when a Royal Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Local Government on Tyneside was appointed. The three commissioners were to examine the system of local government in the areas of local government north and south of the river Tyne from the sea to the boundary of the Rural District of Castle Ward and Hexham in the County of Northumberland and to the Western boundary of the County of Durham, to consider what changes, if any, should be made in the existing arrangements with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency, and to make recommendations.

 

The report of the Royal Commission, published in 1937, recommended the establishment of a Regional Council for Northumberland and Tyneside (to be called the "Northumberland Regional Council") to administer services that needed to be exercised over a wide area, with a second tier of smaller units for other local-government purposes. The second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status. Within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs.

 

A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, Hebburn and Newburn into a single "county borough of Newcastle-on-Tyneside". The 1937 proposals never came into operation: local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one.

 

Tyneside (excluding Sunderland) was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958. The Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. This was not implemented. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, which would have set up a separate East Durham unitary authority.

 

The White Paper that led to the Local Government Act 1972 proposed as "area 2" a metropolitan county including Newcastle and Sunderland, extending as far south down the coast as Seaham and Easington, and bordering "area 4" (which would become Tees Valley). The Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name "Tyneside". The name "Tyneside" proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to "Tyne and Wear" at the request of Sunderland County Borough Council.

 

Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle and inland Durham in County Durham around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Sunderland. There are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate.

 

Tyne and Wear contains green belt interspersed throughout the county, mainly on the fringes of the Tyneside/Wearside conurbation. There is also an inter-urban line of belt helping to keep the districts of South Tyneside, Gateshead, and Sunderland separated. It was first drawn up from the 1950s. All the county's districts contain some portion of belt.

 

Although Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy. Through its passenger transport executive, known as Nexus, it owns and operates the Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system, and the Shields ferry service and the Tyne Tunnel, linking communities on either side of the River Tyne. Also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services (including taxis) and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. Nexus has been an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee since November 2018.

 

Other joint bodies include the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, which was created from the merger of the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and Tyne and Wear Museums. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils. In addition the Northumbria Police force covers Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

 

There have been occasional calls for Tyne and Wear to be abolished and the traditional border between Northumberland and County Durham to be restored.

 

Tyne and Wear is divided into 12 Parliamentary constituencies. Historically, the area has been a Labour stronghold; South Shields is the only Parliamentary constituency that has never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.

 

Newcastle and Sunderland are known for declaring their election results early on election night. Therefore, they frequently give the first indication of nationwide trends. An example of this was at the 2016 European Union referendum. Newcastle was the first large city to declare, and 50.6% of voters voted to Remain; this proportion was far lower than predicted by experts. Sunderland declared soon after and gave a 62% vote to Leave, much higher than expected. These two results were seen as an early sign that the United Kingdom had voted to Leave.

 

Offshore Group Newcastle make oil platforms. Sage Group, who produce accounting software, are based at Hazlerigg at the northern end of the Newcastle bypass. Northern Rock, which became a bank in 1997 and was taken over by Virgin Money in November 2011, and the Newcastle Building Society are based in Gosforth. The Gosforth-based bakery Greggs now has over 1,500 shops. The Balliol Business Park in Longbenton contains Procter & Gamble research and global business centres and a tax credits call centre for HMRC, and is the former home of Findus UK. The Government National Insurance Contributions Office in Longbenton, demolished and replaced in 2000, had a 1 mile (1.6 km) long corridor.

 

Be-Ro and the Go-Ahead Group bus company are in central Newcastle. Nestlé use the former Rowntrees chocolate factory on the east of the A1. BAE Systems Land & Armaments in Scotswood, formerly Vickers-Armstrongs, is the main producer of British Army tanks such as the Challenger 2. A Rolls-Royce apprentice training site is next door.[18] Siemens Energy Service Fossil make steam turbines at the CA Parsons Works in South Heaton. Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and developed an important local company. Domestos, a product whose main ingredient is sodium hypochlorite, was originated in Newcastle in 1929 by William Handley, and was distributed from the area for many years.

 

Clarke Chapman is next to the A167 in Gateshead. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Scottish & Newcastle was the largest UK-owned brewery until it was bought by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008, and produced Newcastle Brown Ale at the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston until production moved to Tadcaster in September 2010. At Team Valley are De La Rue, with their largest banknote printing facility, and Myson Radiators, the second largest in the UK market. Petards make surveillance equipment including ANPR cameras, and its Joyce-Loebl division makes electronic warfare systems and countermeasure dispensing systems such as the AN/ALE-47. Sevcon, an international company formed from a part of Smith Electric, is a world leader in electric vehicle controls. AEI Cables and Komatsu UK construction equipment at Birtley.

 

J. Barbour & Sons make outdoor clothing in Simonside, Jarrow. SAFT Batteries make primary lithium batteries on the Tyne in South Shields. Bellway plc houses is in Seaton Burn in North Tyneside. Cobalt Business Park, the largest office park in the UK, is at Wallsend, on the former site of Atmel, and is the home of North Tyneside Council. Swan Hunter until 2006 made ships in Wallsend, and still designs ships. Soil Machine Dynamics in Wallsend on the Tyne makes Remotely operated underwater vehicles, and its Ultra Trencher 1 is the world's largest submersible robot.

 

The car dealership Evans Halshaw is in Sunderland. The car factory owned by Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK between North Hylton and Washington is the largest in the UK. Grundfos, the world's leading pump manufacturer, builds pumps in Sunderland. Calsonic Kansei UK, formerly Magna, make automotive instrument panels and car trim at the Pennywell Industrial Estate. Gestamp UK make automotive components. Smith Electric Vehicles originated in Washington. The LG Electronics microwave oven factory opened in 1989, closed in May 2004, and later became the site of the Tanfield Group. Goodyear Dunlop had their only UK car tyre factory next to the Tanfield site until its 2006 closure. BAE Systems Global Combat Systems moved to a new £75 million factory at the former Goodyear site in 2011, where they make large calibre ammunition for tanks and artillery.

 

The government's child benefit office is in Washington. Liebherr build cranes next to the Wear at Deptford. The outdoor clothing company Berghaus is in Castletown. Vaux Breweries, who owned Swallow Hotels, closed in 1999. ScS Sofas are on Borough Road. There are many call centres in Sunderland, notably EDF Energy at the Doxford International Business Park, which is also the home of the headquarters of the large international transport company Arriva and Nike UK. Rolls-Royce planned to move their production of fan and turbine discs to BAE Systems' new site in 2016.

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Tyne and Wear is a ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The county is largely urbanised. It had a population of 1.14 million in 2021. After Newcastle (300,125) the largest settlements are the city of Sunderland (170,134), Gateshead (120,046), and South Shields (75,337). Nearly all of the county's settlements belong to either the Tyneside or Wearside conurbations, the latter of which also extends into County Durham. Tyne and Wear contains five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and is covered by two combined authorities, North of Tyne and North East. The county was established in 1974 and was historically part of Northumberland and County Durham, with the River Tyne forming the border between the two.

 

The most notable geographic features of the county are the River Tyne and River Wear, after which it is named and along which its major settlements developed. The county is also notable for its coastline to the North Sea in the east, which is characterised by tall limestone cliffs and wide beaches.

 

In the late 600s and into the 700s Saint Bede lived as a monk at the monastery of St. Peter and of St. Paul writing histories of the Early Middle Ages including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

 

Roughly 150 years ago, in the village of Marsden in South Shields, Souter Lighthouse was built, the first electric structure of this type.

 

The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland as county boroughs (Newcastle had "county corporate" status as the "County and Town of Newcastle upon Tyne" since 1400). Tynemouth joined them in 1904. Between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland.

 

The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, when a Royal Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Local Government on Tyneside was appointed. The three commissioners were to examine the system of local government in the areas of local government north and south of the river Tyne from the sea to the boundary of the Rural District of Castle Ward and Hexham in the County of Northumberland and to the Western boundary of the County of Durham, to consider what changes, if any, should be made in the existing arrangements with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency, and to make recommendations.

 

The report of the Royal Commission, published in 1937, recommended the establishment of a Regional Council for Northumberland and Tyneside (to be called the "Northumberland Regional Council") to administer services that needed to be exercised over a wide area, with a second tier of smaller units for other local-government purposes. The second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status. Within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs.

 

A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, Hebburn and Newburn into a single "county borough of Newcastle-on-Tyneside". The 1937 proposals never came into operation: local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one.

 

Tyneside (excluding Sunderland) was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958. The Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. This was not implemented. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, which would have set up a separate East Durham unitary authority.

 

The White Paper that led to the Local Government Act 1972 proposed as "area 2" a metropolitan county including Newcastle and Sunderland, extending as far south down the coast as Seaham and Easington, and bordering "area 4" (which would become Tees Valley). The Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name "Tyneside". The name "Tyneside" proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to "Tyne and Wear" at the request of Sunderland County Borough Council.

 

Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle and inland Durham in County Durham around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Sunderland. There are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate.

 

Tyne and Wear contains green belt interspersed throughout the county, mainly on the fringes of the Tyneside/Wearside conurbation. There is also an inter-urban line of belt helping to keep the districts of South Tyneside, Gateshead, and Sunderland separated. It was first drawn up from the 1950s. All the county's districts contain some portion of belt.

 

Although Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy. Through its passenger transport executive, known as Nexus, it owns and operates the Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system, and the Shields ferry service and the Tyne Tunnel, linking communities on either side of the River Tyne. Also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services (including taxis) and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. Nexus has been an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee since November 2018.

 

Other joint bodies include the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, which was created from the merger of the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and Tyne and Wear Museums. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils. In addition the Northumbria Police force covers Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

 

There have been occasional calls for Tyne and Wear to be abolished and the traditional border between Northumberland and County Durham to be restored.

 

Tyne and Wear is divided into 12 Parliamentary constituencies. Historically, the area has been a Labour stronghold; South Shields is the only Parliamentary constituency that has never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.

 

Newcastle and Sunderland are known for declaring their election results early on election night. Therefore, they frequently give the first indication of nationwide trends. An example of this was at the 2016 European Union referendum. Newcastle was the first large city to declare, and 50.6% of voters voted to Remain; this proportion was far lower than predicted by experts. Sunderland declared soon after and gave a 62% vote to Leave, much higher than expected. These two results were seen as an early sign that the United Kingdom had voted to Leave.

 

Offshore Group Newcastle make oil platforms. Sage Group, who produce accounting software, are based at Hazlerigg at the northern end of the Newcastle bypass. Northern Rock, which became a bank in 1997 and was taken over by Virgin Money in November 2011, and the Newcastle Building Society are based in Gosforth. The Gosforth-based bakery Greggs now has over 1,500 shops. The Balliol Business Park in Longbenton contains Procter & Gamble research and global business centres and a tax credits call centre for HMRC, and is the former home of Findus UK. The Government National Insurance Contributions Office in Longbenton, demolished and replaced in 2000, had a 1 mile (1.6 km) long corridor.

 

Be-Ro and the Go-Ahead Group bus company are in central Newcastle. Nestlé use the former Rowntrees chocolate factory on the east of the A1. BAE Systems Land & Armaments in Scotswood, formerly Vickers-Armstrongs, is the main producer of British Army tanks such as the Challenger 2. A Rolls-Royce apprentice training site is next door.[18] Siemens Energy Service Fossil make steam turbines at the CA Parsons Works in South Heaton. Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and developed an important local company. Domestos, a product whose main ingredient is sodium hypochlorite, was originated in Newcastle in 1929 by William Handley, and was distributed from the area for many years.

 

Clarke Chapman is next to the A167 in Gateshead. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Scottish & Newcastle was the largest UK-owned brewery until it was bought by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008, and produced Newcastle Brown Ale at the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston until production moved to Tadcaster in September 2010. At Team Valley are De La Rue, with their largest banknote printing facility, and Myson Radiators, the second largest in the UK market. Petards make surveillance equipment including ANPR cameras, and its Joyce-Loebl division makes electronic warfare systems and countermeasure dispensing systems such as the AN/ALE-47. Sevcon, an international company formed from a part of Smith Electric, is a world leader in electric vehicle controls. AEI Cables and Komatsu UK construction equipment at Birtley.

 

J. Barbour & Sons make outdoor clothing in Simonside, Jarrow. SAFT Batteries make primary lithium batteries on the Tyne in South Shields. Bellway plc houses is in Seaton Burn in North Tyneside. Cobalt Business Park, the largest office park in the UK, is at Wallsend, on the former site of Atmel, and is the home of North Tyneside Council. Swan Hunter until 2006 made ships in Wallsend, and still designs ships. Soil Machine Dynamics in Wallsend on the Tyne makes Remotely operated underwater vehicles, and its Ultra Trencher 1 is the world's largest submersible robot.

 

The car dealership Evans Halshaw is in Sunderland. The car factory owned by Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK between North Hylton and Washington is the largest in the UK. Grundfos, the world's leading pump manufacturer, builds pumps in Sunderland. Calsonic Kansei UK, formerly Magna, make automotive instrument panels and car trim at the Pennywell Industrial Estate. Gestamp UK make automotive components. Smith Electric Vehicles originated in Washington. The LG Electronics microwave oven factory opened in 1989, closed in May 2004, and later became the site of the Tanfield Group. Goodyear Dunlop had their only UK car tyre factory next to the Tanfield site until its 2006 closure. BAE Systems Global Combat Systems moved to a new £75 million factory at the former Goodyear site in 2011, where they make large calibre ammunition for tanks and artillery.

 

The government's child benefit office is in Washington. Liebherr build cranes next to the Wear at Deptford. The outdoor clothing company Berghaus is in Castletown. Vaux Breweries, who owned Swallow Hotels, closed in 1999. ScS Sofas are on Borough Road. There are many call centres in Sunderland, notably EDF Energy at the Doxford International Business Park, which is also the home of the headquarters of the large international transport company Arriva and Nike UK. Rolls-Royce planned to move their production of fan and turbine discs to BAE Systems' new site in 2016.

The Minster Church of St Michael and All Angels and St Benedict Biscop (commonly known as Sunderland Minster) is the minster church of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England. Formerly known as "St Michael & All Angels' Church", it served as the parish church for Bishopwearmouth, but was renamed in January 1998 after Sunderland was granted city status. In May 2007 the Minster ceased to be the parish church of Bishopwearmouth and village is now a suburb of Sunderland. Sunderland Minster is part of the Greater Churches Group.

 

A church dedicated to St Michael & All Angels has stood on this site for over a thousand years. For most of that time, it has been known as 'Bishopwearmouth Parish Church'. The parish of Bishopwearmouth, south of the River Wear was founded in around 940AD, with an original stone church being built shortly afterwards. The first evidence of a church on the site arose in a 1930s excavation when Saxon stones were found. Due to colliery subsidence, the church was virtually re-built beyond recognition in the early 20th century, but not all parts of the former church were lost.

 

In 1998, following the grant of City status, the church was redesignated as 'Sunderland Minster': the second Minster church in England since the Reformation (following Dewsbury Minster in West Yorkshire in 1994).

 

In May 2007, with the adoption of Benedict Biscop as Sunderland's Patron Saint, the church was redesignated as an Extra Parochial Place with the addition of St Benedict Biscop in its title.

 

It is a Grade II* listed building.

 

Until May 2007 the team of ministers carried out traditional parish duties as well as serving the city by hosting services of remembrance, providing chaplaincies for the retail and industrial workforces in the city centre, as well as being used by the University chaplaincy. It continues to play host to special services and worship events for the whole city, as it did for many years as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church. In 2007 the Minster ended its parish role, and these functions were transferred to the Parish Churches of St Nicholas and St Ignatius. Since then the Minster describes itself as "A church for the whole City".

 

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Tyne and Wear is a ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The county is largely urbanised. It had a population of 1.14 million in 2021. After Newcastle (300,125) the largest settlements are the city of Sunderland (170,134), Gateshead (120,046), and South Shields (75,337). Nearly all of the county's settlements belong to either the Tyneside or Wearside conurbations, the latter of which also extends into County Durham. Tyne and Wear contains five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and is covered by two combined authorities, North of Tyne and North East. The county was established in 1974 and was historically part of Northumberland and County Durham, with the River Tyne forming the border between the two.

 

The most notable geographic features of the county are the River Tyne and River Wear, after which it is named and along which its major settlements developed. The county is also notable for its coastline to the North Sea in the east, which is characterised by tall limestone cliffs and wide beaches.

 

In the late 600s and into the 700s Saint Bede lived as a monk at the monastery of St. Peter and of St. Paul writing histories of the Early Middle Ages including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

 

Roughly 150 years ago, in the village of Marsden in South Shields, Souter Lighthouse was built, the first electric structure of this type.

 

The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland as county boroughs (Newcastle had "county corporate" status as the "County and Town of Newcastle upon Tyne" since 1400). Tynemouth joined them in 1904. Between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland.

 

The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, when a Royal Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Local Government on Tyneside was appointed. The three commissioners were to examine the system of local government in the areas of local government north and south of the river Tyne from the sea to the boundary of the Rural District of Castle Ward and Hexham in the County of Northumberland and to the Western boundary of the County of Durham, to consider what changes, if any, should be made in the existing arrangements with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency, and to make recommendations.

 

The report of the Royal Commission, published in 1937, recommended the establishment of a Regional Council for Northumberland and Tyneside (to be called the "Northumberland Regional Council") to administer services that needed to be exercised over a wide area, with a second tier of smaller units for other local-government purposes. The second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status. Within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs.

 

A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, Hebburn and Newburn into a single "county borough of Newcastle-on-Tyneside". The 1937 proposals never came into operation: local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one.

 

Tyneside (excluding Sunderland) was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958. The Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. This was not implemented. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, which would have set up a separate East Durham unitary authority.

 

The White Paper that led to the Local Government Act 1972 proposed as "area 2" a metropolitan county including Newcastle and Sunderland, extending as far south down the coast as Seaham and Easington, and bordering "area 4" (which would become Tees Valley). The Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name "Tyneside". The name "Tyneside" proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to "Tyne and Wear" at the request of Sunderland County Borough Council.

 

Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle and inland Durham in County Durham around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Sunderland. There are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate.

 

Tyne and Wear contains green belt interspersed throughout the county, mainly on the fringes of the Tyneside/Wearside conurbation. There is also an inter-urban line of belt helping to keep the districts of South Tyneside, Gateshead, and Sunderland separated. It was first drawn up from the 1950s. All the county's districts contain some portion of belt.

 

Although Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy. Through its passenger transport executive, known as Nexus, it owns and operates the Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system, and the Shields ferry service and the Tyne Tunnel, linking communities on either side of the River Tyne. Also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services (including taxis) and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. Nexus has been an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee since November 2018.

 

Other joint bodies include the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, which was created from the merger of the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and Tyne and Wear Museums. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils. In addition the Northumbria Police force covers Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

 

There have been occasional calls for Tyne and Wear to be abolished and the traditional border between Northumberland and County Durham to be restored.

 

Tyne and Wear is divided into 12 Parliamentary constituencies. Historically, the area has been a Labour stronghold; South Shields is the only Parliamentary constituency that has never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.

 

Newcastle and Sunderland are known for declaring their election results early on election night. Therefore, they frequently give the first indication of nationwide trends. An example of this was at the 2016 European Union referendum. Newcastle was the first large city to declare, and 50.6% of voters voted to Remain; this proportion was far lower than predicted by experts. Sunderland declared soon after and gave a 62% vote to Leave, much higher than expected. These two results were seen as an early sign that the United Kingdom had voted to Leave.

 

Offshore Group Newcastle make oil platforms. Sage Group, who produce accounting software, are based at Hazlerigg at the northern end of the Newcastle bypass. Northern Rock, which became a bank in 1997 and was taken over by Virgin Money in November 2011, and the Newcastle Building Society are based in Gosforth. The Gosforth-based bakery Greggs now has over 1,500 shops. The Balliol Business Park in Longbenton contains Procter & Gamble research and global business centres and a tax credits call centre for HMRC, and is the former home of Findus UK. The Government National Insurance Contributions Office in Longbenton, demolished and replaced in 2000, had a 1 mile (1.6 km) long corridor.

 

Be-Ro and the Go-Ahead Group bus company are in central Newcastle. Nestlé use the former Rowntrees chocolate factory on the east of the A1. BAE Systems Land & Armaments in Scotswood, formerly Vickers-Armstrongs, is the main producer of British Army tanks such as the Challenger 2. A Rolls-Royce apprentice training site is next door.[18] Siemens Energy Service Fossil make steam turbines at the CA Parsons Works in South Heaton. Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and developed an important local company. Domestos, a product whose main ingredient is sodium hypochlorite, was originated in Newcastle in 1929 by William Handley, and was distributed from the area for many years.

 

Clarke Chapman is next to the A167 in Gateshead. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Scottish & Newcastle was the largest UK-owned brewery until it was bought by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008, and produced Newcastle Brown Ale at the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston until production moved to Tadcaster in September 2010. At Team Valley are De La Rue, with their largest banknote printing facility, and Myson Radiators, the second largest in the UK market. Petards make surveillance equipment including ANPR cameras, and its Joyce-Loebl division makes electronic warfare systems and countermeasure dispensing systems such as the AN/ALE-47. Sevcon, an international company formed from a part of Smith Electric, is a world leader in electric vehicle controls. AEI Cables and Komatsu UK construction equipment at Birtley.

 

J. Barbour & Sons make outdoor clothing in Simonside, Jarrow. SAFT Batteries make primary lithium batteries on the Tyne in South Shields. Bellway plc houses is in Seaton Burn in North Tyneside. Cobalt Business Park, the largest office park in the UK, is at Wallsend, on the former site of Atmel, and is the home of North Tyneside Council. Swan Hunter until 2006 made ships in Wallsend, and still designs ships. Soil Machine Dynamics in Wallsend on the Tyne makes Remotely operated underwater vehicles, and its Ultra Trencher 1 is the world's largest submersible robot.

 

The car dealership Evans Halshaw is in Sunderland. The car factory owned by Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK between North Hylton and Washington is the largest in the UK. Grundfos, the world's leading pump manufacturer, builds pumps in Sunderland. Calsonic Kansei UK, formerly Magna, make automotive instrument panels and car trim at the Pennywell Industrial Estate. Gestamp UK make automotive components. Smith Electric Vehicles originated in Washington. The LG Electronics microwave oven factory opened in 1989, closed in May 2004, and later became the site of the Tanfield Group. Goodyear Dunlop had their only UK car tyre factory next to the Tanfield site until its 2006 closure. BAE Systems Global Combat Systems moved to a new £75 million factory at the former Goodyear site in 2011, where they make large calibre ammunition for tanks and artillery.

 

The government's child benefit office is in Washington. Liebherr build cranes next to the Wear at Deptford. The outdoor clothing company Berghaus is in Castletown. Vaux Breweries, who owned Swallow Hotels, closed in 1999. ScS Sofas are on Borough Road. There are many call centres in Sunderland, notably EDF Energy at the Doxford International Business Park, which is also the home of the headquarters of the large international transport company Arriva and Nike UK. Rolls-Royce planned to move their production of fan and turbine discs to BAE Systems' new site in 2016.

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Tyne and Wear is a ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The county is largely urbanised. It had a population of 1.14 million in 2021. After Newcastle (300,125) the largest settlements are the city of Sunderland (170,134), Gateshead (120,046), and South Shields (75,337). Nearly all of the county's settlements belong to either the Tyneside or Wearside conurbations, the latter of which also extends into County Durham. Tyne and Wear contains five metropolitan boroughs: Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, and is covered by two combined authorities, North of Tyne and North East. The county was established in 1974 and was historically part of Northumberland and County Durham, with the River Tyne forming the border between the two.

 

The most notable geographic features of the county are the River Tyne and River Wear, after which it is named and along which its major settlements developed. The county is also notable for its coastline to the North Sea in the east, which is characterised by tall limestone cliffs and wide beaches.

 

In the late 600s and into the 700s Saint Bede lived as a monk at the monastery of St. Peter and of St. Paul writing histories of the Early Middle Ages including the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

 

Roughly 150 years ago, in the village of Marsden in South Shields, Souter Lighthouse was built, the first electric structure of this type.

 

The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Sunderland as county boroughs (Newcastle had "county corporate" status as the "County and Town of Newcastle upon Tyne" since 1400). Tynemouth joined them in 1904. Between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland.

 

The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, when a Royal Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Local Government on Tyneside was appointed. The three commissioners were to examine the system of local government in the areas of local government north and south of the river Tyne from the sea to the boundary of the Rural District of Castle Ward and Hexham in the County of Northumberland and to the Western boundary of the County of Durham, to consider what changes, if any, should be made in the existing arrangements with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency, and to make recommendations.

 

The report of the Royal Commission, published in 1937, recommended the establishment of a Regional Council for Northumberland and Tyneside (to be called the "Northumberland Regional Council") to administer services that needed to be exercised over a wide area, with a second tier of smaller units for other local-government purposes. The second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status. Within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs.

 

A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, Hebburn and Newburn into a single "county borough of Newcastle-on-Tyneside". The 1937 proposals never came into operation: local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one.

 

Tyneside (excluding Sunderland) was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958. The Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. This was not implemented. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, which would have set up a separate East Durham unitary authority.

 

The White Paper that led to the Local Government Act 1972 proposed as "area 2" a metropolitan county including Newcastle and Sunderland, extending as far south down the coast as Seaham and Easington, and bordering "area 4" (which would become Tees Valley). The Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name "Tyneside". The name "Tyneside" proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to "Tyne and Wear" at the request of Sunderland County Borough Council.

 

Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle and inland Durham in County Durham around 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-west of Sunderland. There are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate.

 

Tyne and Wear contains green belt interspersed throughout the county, mainly on the fringes of the Tyneside/Wearside conurbation. There is also an inter-urban line of belt helping to keep the districts of South Tyneside, Gateshead, and Sunderland separated. It was first drawn up from the 1950s. All the county's districts contain some portion of belt.

 

Although Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy. Through its passenger transport executive, known as Nexus, it owns and operates the Tyne and Wear Metro light rail system, and the Shields ferry service and the Tyne Tunnel, linking communities on either side of the River Tyne. Also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services (including taxis) and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. Nexus has been an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee since November 2018.

 

Other joint bodies include the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, which was created from the merger of the Tyne and Wear Archives Service and Tyne and Wear Museums. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils. In addition the Northumbria Police force covers Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

 

There have been occasional calls for Tyne and Wear to be abolished and the traditional border between Northumberland and County Durham to be restored.

 

Tyne and Wear is divided into 12 Parliamentary constituencies. Historically, the area has been a Labour stronghold; South Shields is the only Parliamentary constituency that has never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.

 

Newcastle and Sunderland are known for declaring their election results early on election night. Therefore, they frequently give the first indication of nationwide trends. An example of this was at the 2016 European Union referendum. Newcastle was the first large city to declare, and 50.6% of voters voted to Remain; this proportion was far lower than predicted by experts. Sunderland declared soon after and gave a 62% vote to Leave, much higher than expected. These two results were seen as an early sign that the United Kingdom had voted to Leave.

 

Offshore Group Newcastle make oil platforms. Sage Group, who produce accounting software, are based at Hazlerigg at the northern end of the Newcastle bypass. Northern Rock, which became a bank in 1997 and was taken over by Virgin Money in November 2011, and the Newcastle Building Society are based in Gosforth. The Gosforth-based bakery Greggs now has over 1,500 shops. The Balliol Business Park in Longbenton contains Procter & Gamble research and global business centres and a tax credits call centre for HMRC, and is the former home of Findus UK. The Government National Insurance Contributions Office in Longbenton, demolished and replaced in 2000, had a 1 mile (1.6 km) long corridor.

 

Be-Ro and the Go-Ahead Group bus company are in central Newcastle. Nestlé use the former Rowntrees chocolate factory on the east of the A1. BAE Systems Land & Armaments in Scotswood, formerly Vickers-Armstrongs, is the main producer of British Army tanks such as the Challenger 2. A Rolls-Royce apprentice training site is next door.[18] Siemens Energy Service Fossil make steam turbines at the CA Parsons Works in South Heaton. Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, and developed an important local company. Domestos, a product whose main ingredient is sodium hypochlorite, was originated in Newcastle in 1929 by William Handley, and was distributed from the area for many years.

 

Clarke Chapman is next to the A167 in Gateshead. The MetroCentre, the largest shopping centre in Europe, is in Dunston. Scottish & Newcastle was the largest UK-owned brewery until it was bought by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008, and produced Newcastle Brown Ale at the Newcastle Federation Brewery in Dunston until production moved to Tadcaster in September 2010. At Team Valley are De La Rue, with their largest banknote printing facility, and Myson Radiators, the second largest in the UK market. Petards make surveillance equipment including ANPR cameras, and its Joyce-Loebl division makes electronic warfare systems and countermeasure dispensing systems such as the AN/ALE-47. Sevcon, an international company formed from a part of Smith Electric, is a world leader in electric vehicle controls. AEI Cables and Komatsu UK construction equipment at Birtley.

 

J. Barbour & Sons make outdoor clothing in Simonside, Jarrow. SAFT Batteries make primary lithium batteries on the Tyne in South Shields. Bellway plc houses is in Seaton Burn in North Tyneside. Cobalt Business Park, the largest office park in the UK, is at Wallsend, on the former site of Atmel, and is the home of North Tyneside Council. Swan Hunter until 2006 made ships in Wallsend, and still designs ships. Soil Machine Dynamics in Wallsend on the Tyne makes Remotely operated underwater vehicles, and its Ultra Trencher 1 is the world's largest submersible robot.

 

The car dealership Evans Halshaw is in Sunderland. The car factory owned by Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK between North Hylton and Washington is the largest in the UK. Grundfos, the world's leading pump manufacturer, builds pumps in Sunderland. Calsonic Kansei UK, formerly Magna, make automotive instrument panels and car trim at the Pennywell Industrial Estate. Gestamp UK make automotive components. Smith Electric Vehicles originated in Washington. The LG Electronics microwave oven factory opened in 1989, closed in May 2004, and later became the site of the Tanfield Group. Goodyear Dunlop had their only UK car tyre factory next to the Tanfield site until its 2006 closure. BAE Systems Global Combat Systems moved to a new £75 million factory at the former Goodyear site in 2011, where they make large calibre ammunition for tanks and artillery.

 

The government's child benefit office is in Washington. Liebherr build cranes next to the Wear at Deptford. The outdoor clothing company Berghaus is in Castletown. Vaux Breweries, who owned Swallow Hotels, closed in 1999. ScS Sofas are on Borough Road. There are many call centres in Sunderland, notably EDF Energy at the Doxford International Business Park, which is also the home of the headquarters of the large international transport company Arriva and Nike UK. Rolls-Royce planned to move their production of fan and turbine discs to BAE Systems' new site in 2016.

Back by popular demand to feed your inner curiosity, the fourth annual Startup Crawl features 15 of the hottest startup pads in Denver. Participants will rendezvous at Basecamp to embark on a route throughout Downtown Denver stopping at 15 quintessential Denver startups to eat, drink, and celebrate our homegrown tech culture. The crawl gives technologists a chance to go behind the scenes and experience the company culture first hand. Stay tuned for inclusions, participating companies, and interactive components.

 

View an interactive map here

 

Crawl Stops include:

 

CHOOZLE 2245 Curtis Street Suite 200

Commercial Tribe 1444 Wazee St., Suite 130

FullContact Inc 1755 Blake St, Suite 450

GoSpotCheck 1520 Market St Fl 2

Ibotta, Inc. 1900 16th Street Suite 400

iTriage/Aetna 1515 Wynkoop

Parkifi 1321 15th St

PaySimple 1515 Wynkoop #250

Ping Identity 1001 17th Street, Ste: 100

SendGrid 1451 Larimer Street, 3rd Floor

Signpost 2363 Blake St

thoughtbot 1600 Champa St, Suite 340

Wayin 1625 Blake St

Zayo Group 1621 18th St

Zomato 1726 Champa St., Suite 100

This year we’re upping the stakes with a contest. Stop at 5 or more companies and be entered to win a slew of startup prizes at Built In Brews after the crawl. Craftsy reps will be stamping your maps at each location to prove your journey.

 

Swing by Basecamp at 3pm to start the crawl, pick up your crawl map/bing card, enjoy a beer and some music!

 

Sponsored by: Xero is beautiful, easy-to-use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. Business owners enjoy a complete solution with payroll, inventory, countless educational resources and more. In fact, Xero makes being in business even better. This begins with free 24/7 support and seamless integration with over 400 third-party tools, including advanced solutions for CRM, point-of-sale, time tracking, ecommerce, inventory and more. It’s no wonder that Xero has 540,000+ paying customers in more than 180 countries – and was ranked No. 1 by Forbes as the World's Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.

 

Photography by 23rd Studios, 23rdstudios.com for permission to use photos - info@23rdstudios.com

Back by popular demand to feed your inner curiosity, the fourth annual Startup Crawl features 15 of the hottest startup pads in Denver. Participants will rendezvous at Basecamp to embark on a route throughout Downtown Denver stopping at 15 quintessential Denver startups to eat, drink, and celebrate our homegrown tech culture. The crawl gives technologists a chance to go behind the scenes and experience the company culture first hand. Stay tuned for inclusions, participating companies, and interactive components.

 

View an interactive map here

 

Crawl Stops include:

 

CHOOZLE 2245 Curtis Street Suite 200

Commercial Tribe 1444 Wazee St., Suite 130

FullContact Inc 1755 Blake St, Suite 450

GoSpotCheck 1520 Market St Fl 2

Ibotta, Inc. 1900 16th Street Suite 400

iTriage/Aetna 1515 Wynkoop

Parkifi 1321 15th St

PaySimple 1515 Wynkoop #250

Ping Identity 1001 17th Street, Ste: 100

SendGrid 1451 Larimer Street, 3rd Floor

Signpost 2363 Blake St

thoughtbot 1600 Champa St, Suite 340

Wayin 1625 Blake St

Zayo Group 1621 18th St

Zomato 1726 Champa St., Suite 100

This year we’re upping the stakes with a contest. Stop at 5 or more companies and be entered to win a slew of startup prizes at Built In Brews after the crawl. Craftsy reps will be stamping your maps at each location to prove your journey.

 

Swing by Basecamp at 3pm to start the crawl, pick up your crawl map/bing card, enjoy a beer and some music!

 

Sponsored by: Xero is beautiful, easy-to-use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. Business owners enjoy a complete solution with payroll, inventory, countless educational resources and more. In fact, Xero makes being in business even better. This begins with free 24/7 support and seamless integration with over 400 third-party tools, including advanced solutions for CRM, point-of-sale, time tracking, ecommerce, inventory and more. It’s no wonder that Xero has 540,000+ paying customers in more than 180 countries – and was ranked No. 1 by Forbes as the World's Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.

 

Photography by 23rd Studios, 23rdstudios.com for permission to use photos - info@23rdstudios.com

A busy day for the Access team at Softworld 2010 as they demonstrate our HR, payroll and finance solutions.

 

Read about our business and accounting software on our website.

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Accounts/Finance software on iPOTT www.ipott.com/accounts-finance-software-in-india/14

 

Accounts/Finance software on iPOTT. payroll management solution for Total accounting, inventory management, business accounting with personal accounting software and investment tracker.

www.caltrix.asia/blog/top-5-cloud-accounting-software-in-...

 

CALTRiX is a Gold XERO Champion Partner in Malaysia. Having helped more than hundreds of clients make their transformations, the CALTRiX team is more than familiar with the XERO Cloud Accounting Software in Malaysia and the best ways to maximize its impact on your business.

Andrew Kuntaraf is director of the newly-created Office of Membership Accounting Software as part of the Adventist world church Secretariat. [photo: Ansel Oliver]

Back by popular demand to feed your inner curiosity, the fourth annual Startup Crawl features 15 of the hottest startup pads in Denver. Participants will rendezvous at Basecamp to embark on a route throughout Downtown Denver stopping at 15 quintessential Denver startups to eat, drink, and celebrate our homegrown tech culture. The crawl gives technologists a chance to go behind the scenes and experience the company culture first hand. Stay tuned for inclusions, participating companies, and interactive components.

 

View an interactive map here

 

Crawl Stops include:

 

CHOOZLE 2245 Curtis Street Suite 200

Commercial Tribe 1444 Wazee St., Suite 130

FullContact Inc 1755 Blake St, Suite 450

GoSpotCheck 1520 Market St Fl 2

Ibotta, Inc. 1900 16th Street Suite 400

iTriage/Aetna 1515 Wynkoop

Parkifi 1321 15th St

PaySimple 1515 Wynkoop #250

Ping Identity 1001 17th Street, Ste: 100

SendGrid 1451 Larimer Street, 3rd Floor

Signpost 2363 Blake St

thoughtbot 1600 Champa St, Suite 340

Wayin 1625 Blake St

Zayo Group 1621 18th St

Zomato 1726 Champa St., Suite 100

This year we’re upping the stakes with a contest. Stop at 5 or more companies and be entered to win a slew of startup prizes at Built In Brews after the crawl. Craftsy reps will be stamping your maps at each location to prove your journey.

 

Swing by Basecamp at 3pm to start the crawl, pick up your crawl map/bing card, enjoy a beer and some music!

 

Sponsored by: Xero is beautiful, easy-to-use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. Business owners enjoy a complete solution with payroll, inventory, countless educational resources and more. In fact, Xero makes being in business even better. This begins with free 24/7 support and seamless integration with over 400 third-party tools, including advanced solutions for CRM, point-of-sale, time tracking, ecommerce, inventory and more. It’s no wonder that Xero has 540,000+ paying customers in more than 180 countries – and was ranked No. 1 by Forbes as the World's Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.

 

Photography by 23rd Studios, 23rdstudios.com for permission to use photos - info@23rdstudios.com

Back by popular demand to feed your inner curiosity, the fourth annual Startup Crawl features 15 of the hottest startup pads in Denver. Participants will rendezvous at Basecamp to embark on a route throughout Downtown Denver stopping at 15 quintessential Denver startups to eat, drink, and celebrate our homegrown tech culture. The crawl gives technologists a chance to go behind the scenes and experience the company culture first hand. Stay tuned for inclusions, participating companies, and interactive components.

 

View an interactive map here

 

Crawl Stops include:

 

CHOOZLE 2245 Curtis Street Suite 200

Commercial Tribe 1444 Wazee St., Suite 130

FullContact Inc 1755 Blake St, Suite 450

GoSpotCheck 1520 Market St Fl 2

Ibotta, Inc. 1900 16th Street Suite 400

iTriage/Aetna 1515 Wynkoop

Parkifi 1321 15th St

PaySimple 1515 Wynkoop #250

Ping Identity 1001 17th Street, Ste: 100

SendGrid 1451 Larimer Street, 3rd Floor

Signpost 2363 Blake St

thoughtbot 1600 Champa St, Suite 340

Wayin 1625 Blake St

Zayo Group 1621 18th St

Zomato 1726 Champa St., Suite 100

This year we’re upping the stakes with a contest. Stop at 5 or more companies and be entered to win a slew of startup prizes at Built In Brews after the crawl. Craftsy reps will be stamping your maps at each location to prove your journey.

 

Swing by Basecamp at 3pm to start the crawl, pick up your crawl map/bing card, enjoy a beer and some music!

 

Sponsored by: Xero is beautiful, easy-to-use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. Business owners enjoy a complete solution with payroll, inventory, countless educational resources and more. In fact, Xero makes being in business even better. This begins with free 24/7 support and seamless integration with over 400 third-party tools, including advanced solutions for CRM, point-of-sale, time tracking, ecommerce, inventory and more. It’s no wonder that Xero has 540,000+ paying customers in more than 180 countries – and was ranked No. 1 by Forbes as the World's Most Innovative Growth Company in 2014 and 2015.

 

Photography by 23rd Studios, 23rdstudios.com for permission to use photos - info@23rdstudios.com

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