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Sunderland is a city in Tyne and Wear, England. It was formerly a county borough but now forms part of the metropolitan borough City of Sunderland. It is situated at the mouth of the River Wear.

The name ''Sunderland'' is reputed to come from Soender-land (soender/sunder being the Anglo-Saxon infinitive, meaning ''to part'', 'sønder' means ''chopped'' in modern Danish), likely to be reference to the valley carved by the River Wear that runs through the heart of the city. Another meaning is that of the name referring to 'land set aside', derived from the rich Christian heritage of the city.

Historically a part of County Durham, there were three original settlements on the site of modern-day Sunderland. On the north side of the river, Monkwearmouth was settled in 674 when Benedict Biscop founded the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery. Opposite the monastery on the south bank, Bishopwearmouth was founded in 930. A small fishing village called Sunderland, located toward the mouth of the river (modern day East End) was granted a charter in 1179.

Over the centuries, Sunderland grew as a port, trading coal and salt. Ships began to be built on the river in the 14th century. By the 19th century, the port of Sunderland had grown to absorb Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth. In 2008 it was revealed that Sunderland had the highest percentage of broadband users and digital television users in the entire United Kingdom, with 66% having both services, well above the national average of 57%

A person who is born or lives around the Sunderland area is sometimes colloquially known as a ''Mackem''.

History

Early history

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.4,000-c.2,000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was evidently a focal point of local activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence for this includes the former presence of a cursus monument. Although it is believed Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era, recorded settlements on the mouth of the Wear date back to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman named Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth-Jarrow (''St. Peter's'') monastery on the north bank of the river Wear - 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 so 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 somedate=August 2008 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. 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 eighth century, the Vikings began to raid the coast, and by the middle of the ninth 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 day boundary of Sunderland.

As early as 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a small fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (modern day Hendon) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham.

From as early as 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville. In 1589, salt began to be made in Sunderland. Large vats of seawater, were heated using coal. As the water evaporated the salt sediment remained. This process is known as salt panning, which gave its name to Bishopwearmouth Panns; the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, located on the river bank between the city centre and Hendon. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge in the area. Only poor quality coal was used in salt panning; quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

17th and 18th centuries

Prior to the English Civil War in 1642, King Charles I bestowed the rights to the East of England coal trade upon Newcastle. This had a big impact on Sunderland, which had begun to rapidly grow as a coal-trading town. This created resentment toward Newcastle and toward the monarchy. In March 1644, a Scottish army allied to the king's enemies was stationed at Sunderland and clashes occurred in the vicinity with Royalist troops under the Marquess of Newcastle who moved against them. The most significant encounter occurred in the Hylton and Boldon areas. During the Civil War Parliament blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade and allowing the Sunderland coal trade to flourish. Because of the difficulty for colliers in trying to navigate the shallow waters of the River Wear, the coal had to be loaded onto keels (large boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

In 1719, the separate parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland parish church (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland as well as the salt panning and the shipbuilding along the banks of the Wear. Around this time, Sunderland was also known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

19th century

Local government was divided between the three churches (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St. Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St. Peter's, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831, the ''select vestrymen'', as the church councilmen were called, showed themselves unable to understand and 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 October 23 1831. Sunderland was put under 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 Borough of Sunderland created in 1835. Sunderland developed on plateaus high above the river, and so never suffered from the problem of allowing people to cross the river without interrupting the passage of high masted vessels. The Wearmouth Bridge was built in 1796, at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament for County Durham (UK Parliament constituency)|County Durham]], and is described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being of superb elegance.date=August 2008 It was the second iron bridge built after the famous span at Ironbridge itself, but over twice as long and only three-quarters the weight. Indeed, at the time of building, it was the biggest single span bridge in the world. Further up the river, the Queen Alexandra Bridge, was built in 1910, linking the areas of Deptford and Southwick.

In 1897, Monkwearmouth officially became a part of Sunderland. Bishopwearmouth had long since been absorbed.

Victoria Hall Disaster

The Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing onto Mowbray Park. The Hall was the scene of a tragedy on June 16 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 toward the door. Those at the front became trapped, and were crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

With the asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14, the disaster is the worst of its kind in British history. The memorial, of a grieving mother holding a dead child, is currently located in Mowbray Park with a protective canopy. Newspaper reports at the time triggered a mood of national outrage and the resulting 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 still remains in full force to this day. The Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

20th century to present

As the former heavy industries have declined, so electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufactures have replaced them, including the Nissan car plant at Washington.

From 1990, the banks of the Wear experienced a massive physical regeneration 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 also 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 has created a further opportunity for new development in the city centre.

Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, for example Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south.

The town was one of the most heavily bombed areas in England during World War II. As a result, much of the town centre was rebuilt in an undistinguished concrete utility style.date=August 2008 However, many fine old buildings remain. 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 Roker, known as the ''Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement'', contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill.

On March 24 2004, the city adopted St. Benedict Biscop as its patron saint. A patron had never been adopted before.

Governance

Civic history

Sunderland was created a municipal borough of County Durham in 1835. Under the Local Government Act 1888, it was given further status as a county borough with independence from county council control. In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, the county borough was abolished and its area combined with that of other districts to form the Metropolitan Borough of Sunderland in Tyne and Wear. The metropolitan borough was granted city status in the United Kingdom after winning a competition in 1992 to celebrate the Queen's 40th year on the throne.

Motto

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

Geography

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

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

The area is part of the Anglican Diocese of Durham. It has been in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham since the Catholic hierarchy was restored in 1850.

Alphabetical street naming of suburbs

Some Sunderland suburbs have most streets beginning with the same letter date=June 2009:

Demography

Sunderland is the 26th largest city in England. At 3,874 hectares, Sunderland is the 45th largest urban area in England by measure of area, with a population density of 45.88 people per hectare.

According to statistics based on the 2001 census, 60% of homes in the Sunderland metropolitan area are owner occupied, with an average household size of 2.4 people. Three percent of the homes have no permanent residents.

66% (men) and 54.7% (women) of the population within working age are economically active. 6.7% of men and 3% of women are unemployed. 12.2% of men and 8.6% women are permanently sick or disabled.

Immigration into Sunderland is 2.4%, emigration is 2.2%.

Ethnicity

98.1% of the population are white, with 1% Asian and 0.4% mixed-racedate=June 2009

In 2001, the most ethnically diverse ward of the city was the (now defunct) Thornholme area - just to the south of the city centre, an area that included the suburbs of Ashbrooke and Eden Vale. Here, 89.4% are white, 7.8% are Asian and 1.3% are mixed-race.

The least ethnically diverse wards are in the north of the city. The area of Castletown is made up of 99.3% white, 0.4% Asian and 0.2% mixed-race.

After London, Sunderland is home to the second largest Colombian community in the UK.

Religion

According to census statistics, 81.5% of Sunderland residents class themselves as Christian, 9.6% are irreligious, 0.7% are Muslim and 7.6% did not wish to give their religion.

114 people of Jewish faith were recorded as living in Sunderland, a vanishingly small percentage. There was no Jewish community before 1750, though subsequently a number of Jewish merchants from across the UK and Europe settled in Sunderland, A Rabbi from Holland was established in the city in 1790. The once thriving Jewish community has been in slow decline since the mid 20th century. Many Sunderland Jews left for stronger Jewish communities in Britain or to Israel. The Jewish primary school, the Menorah School, closed in July 1983. The synagogue on Ryhope Road, opened in 1928, closed at the end of March 2006.

(See also Jews and Judaism in North East England)

Economy

Sunderland has some of the most deprived areas in England with 11 of the 24 wards featuring in the list of the 2000 most deprived wards in England and in the 1980s it was one of the most deprived cities in England.

The most deprived areas are Southwick to the north of the river and Thorney Close to the south - both with chronic levels of unemployment, although the city is performing better than the North East as a whole.

Ship building and coal mining

Once famously hailed as the ''Largest Shipbuilding Town in the World''

, ships were built on the Wear from at least 1346 onwards and by the mid-eighteenth century Sunderland was one of the chief shipbuilding towns in the country. The Port of Sunderland was significantly expanded in the 1850s with the construction of Hudson Dock to designs by River Wear Commissioner's Engineer John Murray, with consultancy by Robert Stephenson. One famous vessel was the ''Torrens'', the clipper in which Joseph Conrad sailed, and on which he began his first novel. As Basil Lubbock states, ''Torrens'' was one of the most successful ships ever built, besides being one of the fastest, and for many years was the favourite passenger ship to Adelaide.date=August 2008 She was one of the most famous ships of her time and can claim to be the finest ship ever launched from a Sunderland yard. She was built in ten months by James Laing at his Deptford yard on the Wear in 1875.

Between 1939 and 1945 the Wear yards launched 245 merchant ships totalling 1.5 million tons, a quarter of the merchant tonnage produced in the UK at this period.

Competition from overseas caused a downturn in demand for Sunderland built ships toward the end of the twentieth century. The last shipyard in Sunderland closed in 1988.

Sunderland, part of the Durham coalfield, has a coal-mining heritage that dates back centuries. At the peak in 1923, 170,000 miners were employed in County Durham alone, as labourers from all over Britain, including many from Scotland and Ireland, entered the region. As demand for coal slipped following World War II, mines began to close across the region, causing mass unemployment. The last coal mine closed in 1994. The site of the last coal mine, Wearmouth Colliery, is now occupied by the Stadium of Light, and a miner's Davy lamp monument stands outside of the ground to honour the heritage of the site. Documentation relating to the region's coalmining heritage are stored at the North East England Mining Archive and Resource Centre (NEEMARC).

Other industry

Glass has been made in Sunderland for around 1,500 years.date=August 2008 As with the coal-mining and shipbuilding, overseas competition has forced the closure of all of Sunderland's glass-making factories. Corning Glass Works, in Sunderland for 120 years, closed on March 31, 2007 and in January 2007, the Pyrex manufacturing site also closed, bringing to an end glass-making in the city. However there has been a modest rejuvenation with the opening of the National Glass Centre which, amongst other things, provides international glass makers with working facilities and a shop to showcase their work.

Vaux Breweries was established in the town centre in the 1880s and for 110 years was a major employer. Following a series of consolidations in the British Brewing industry, however, the brewery was finally closed in July 1999. Vaux in Sunderland and Wards in Sheffield had been part of the Vaux Group, but with the closure of both breweries it was re-branded The Swallow Group, concentrating on the hotel side of the business. This was subject to a successful take-over by Whitbread PLC in the autumn of 2000. It is now a brownfield site and this is a derelict site in an urban area that could be targeted for redevelopmentdate=August 2008

Regeneration

Since the mid 1980's Sunderland has undergone massive regeneration, particularly around the central business district and the river corridor.

1985 to 2009

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In the mid 1980's, Sunderland's economic situation began to improve following the collapse of shipbuilding in the town. In addition to the giant Nissan car factory opened in 1986, new service industries moved in to sites such as the Doxford International Business Park in the south west of the city, attracting a host of national and international companies. Sunderland was named in the shortlist of the top seven ''intelligent cities'' in the world for the use of Information Technology, in both 2004 and 2005.

The former shipyard areas along the Wear were transformed with a mixture of residential, commercial and leisure facilities including St. Peter's Campus of the University of Sunderland, University accommodation along the Fish Quay on the South side of the river, the North Haven housing and marina development, the National Glass Centre, the Stadium of Light and Hylton Riverside Retail Park. Also in 2007, the Echo 24 luxury apartments opened on Pann's Bank overlooking the river. In 2008 the Sunderland Aquatic Centre opened adjacent to the Stadium of Light, containing the only Olympic-size swimming pool between Leeds and Edinburgh.

In 2000, the The Bridges shopping centre was extended towards Crowtree Road and the former Central Bus Station, attracting national chain stores such as Debenhams, H&M and Gap. This was followed by adjacent redevelopments on Park Lane.

Sunderland Corporation's massive post-war housing estate developments, such as Farringdon, Pennywell and Grindon have all passed into the ownership of Gentoo (previously 'Sunderland Housing Group'), a private company and a Registered Social Landlord. Since the housing stock transfer in 2000 there have been considerable improvements to the quality of social housing in the city.

In 2004, redevelopment work began on the Sunniside area of the east-end of the city centre, including a multiplex cinema, a multi-storey car park, restaurants, a casino and tenpin bowling. Originally called the River Quarter, the site was renamed Limelight in 2005, and then was renamed again in 2008, when it became Sunniside Lesuire.

Aside from the leisure site, Sunniside Gardens were landscaped, and a number of new cafes, bars and restaurants were opened. Up-market residential apartments were developed, including the Echo 24 building .

2010 and Beyond

Sunderland City Council's Unitary Development Plan (UDP) outlines ambitious regeneration plans for a number of sites around the city.

The plans are supported by Sunderland Arc, an urban regeneration company funded by the City council, One NorthEast and English Partnerships.

The Holmeside Triangle

The Holmeside Triangle is an area adjacent to the Park Lane transport interchange, enclosed on three sides by Park Lane, Holmeside and railway tracks. Sunderland arc own 75% of the land, currently occupied by a mixture of retail and commercial units including Park Lane Market.

£147 million plans for the site include the creation of extensive retail space, public meeting spaces, cafes, bars and restaurants, and a 33 storey Skyscraper called the ''Spirit of Sunderland'', which would be the tallest building in North East England.

Vaux and Farringdon Row

Since the closure of the Vaux brewery in 1999, a 26 acre brownfield site has laid dormant in the centre of Sunderland. The land is subject to dispute between supermarket chain Tesco, who bought the site in 2001, and Sunderland arc, who submitted plans for its redvelopment in 2002. During formal negotiations, Tesco stated they would be willing to sell the land to arc, if an alternative city centre site could be found. Possibilities include Holmeside Triangle, and the Sunderland Retail Park in Roker. Arc hope to begin development in 2010.

Arc's plans for the site were approved by the Secretary of State in 2007, and include extensive office space, hotels, lesuire and retail units, residential apartments and a new £50m Crown and Magistrates court. The central public arcade will be located under an expansive glass canopy. It is hoped an ''evening economy'' can be encouraged which will complement the city's nightlife.