Belly Dancing Classes In Sunderland, Somerset England

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland’s administrative centre and in the historic county of Durham. The city is 10 miles (16 km) from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on the River Wear’s mouth to the North Sea. The river also flows through Durham roughly 12 miles (19 km) south-west of Sunderland City Centre. It is the only other city in the county and the second largest settlement in the North East after Newcastle upon Tyne.

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems. The term originated as recently as the early 1980s; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. At one time, ships built on the Wear were called “Jamies”, in contrast with those from the Tyne, which were known as “Geordies”, although in the case of “Jamie” it is not known whether this was ever extended to people.

There were three original settlements by the River’s mouth which are part of the modern-day city: Monkwearmouth, settled in 674 on the river’s north bank with King Ecgfrith of Northumbria land granting to Benedict Biscop to found a monastery which, together with Jarrow monastery, later formed the dual Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey; Sunderland, settled in 685; and Bishopwearmouth, founded in 930. The later two are on the Wear’s southern bank. The second settlement on the wear’s mouth grew as a fishing settlement and later as a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city started to trade coal and salt with ships starting to be built on the river in the 14th century. By the 19th century, with a population increase due to shipbuilding, port and docks, the town absorbed the other two settlements. 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.

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 Brythonic-speaking Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in pre-Roman Britain. 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.

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 prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, by 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, with the coal trade growing significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons). Difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the Wear’s shallow waters meant coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. A close-knit group of workers manned the Keels as ‘keelmen’. In 1634 a market and yearly fair charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, incorporated the settlement as a town.

Before the civil war and with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, the North declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), the area itself taken in March of that year. One artifact of the civil war in the area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the present city centre, skirmishes occurred. The Roundheads blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade, which allowed a short period of flourishing coal trade on the Wear.

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’. They was a tonnage duty levy on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds. They was a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders active on the River Wear in the late 17th century.

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.

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 started to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland, salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as ‘Sunderland-near-the-Sea’.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Increasing industrialisation had prompted residents an expansion away from the old port area 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.

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.

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 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened linking collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South, it also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

In 1886–90 a new Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, designed by Brightwen Binyon. By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through Hudson Dock, while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

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.

From 1900 to 1919, an electric tram system was built and was gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being ended in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

The First World War increased shipbuilding, leading to being a target in a 1916 Zeppelin raid and Monkwearmouth struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 people died. Over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000 served in the armed forces during the war.

Through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: shipyards on the Wear went from 15 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.

By 1936 the Sunderland AFC had been league champions on six occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe bombing, 267 people died and local industries destroyed. and damage or destruction to 4,000 homes.

Many 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. After the war, more housing was built and the town’s boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated. Sunderland AFC won their only post-World War II major honour in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup.

Shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coal-mining in 1993 after a mid-1980s unemployment crisis with 20 per cent of the local workforce unemployed in the town.

Electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacturing as well as the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s to fill unemployment from heavy industry. 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.

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. From 1990, the Wear’s riverbanks were regenerated with new housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites; the National Glass Centre, a new University of Sunderland campus on the St Peter’s site were also built. The Vaux Breweries site was clear on the north west fringe of the city centre for further development opportunities in the city centre.

After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the city’s football club, Sunderland AFC 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.

On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint. In 2018 the city was ranked as the best to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, the city was ranked as one of the top 10 safest in the UK.

The 1970 Sunderland Civic Centre closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

Sunderland has the motto of Nil Desperandum Auspice Deo or Under God’s guidance we may never despair. city’s corresponding administrative division was granted city status after winning a competition in 1992 to celebrate the Queen’s 40th year on the throne. The council area’s population (taken at the 2011 Census) was 275,506.

Sunderland was created a municipal borough of County Durham in 1835. Under the Local Government Act 1888, it was given the status of a County Borough, independent 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 metropolitan county. In 1986, Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished with joint bodies such as a passenger transport executive covering the area formed to replace some the abolished council functions, these are to be merged into the North East Mayoral Combined Authority.

Sunderland voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum on European Union membership by 61% of the vote; an unexpectedly high margin. The New Statesman and The Daily Telegraph have described Sunderland as the poster city for Brexit.

For decades, Sunderland has been an electoral stronghold of the Labour Party. As of 2021 Sunderland is represented in the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom by three Labour Members of Parliament; Bridget Phillipson since 2020, Julie Elliott since 2017 and Sharon Hodgson.

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. Several smaller bodies of water, such as Hendon Burn and the Barnes Burn, run through the suburbs. The three road bridges connecting the north and south portions of the city are the Queen Alexandra Bridge at Pallion, the Wearmouth Bridge just to the north of the city centre and most recently the Northern Spire Bridge between Castletown and Pallion. To the west of the city, the Hylton Viaduct carries the A19 dual-carriageway over the Wear (see map below).

The city possesses a number of public parks. Several of these are historic, including Mowbray Park, Roker Park and Barnes Park. In the early 2000s, Herrington Country Park was opened opposite Penshaw Monument. The city’s parks have secured several awards for its commitment to preserving natural facilities, receiving the Britain in Bloom collective in 1993, 1997 and 2000.

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 in the south and Seaburn in the north.

In the 2011 census, there were three definitions of Sunderland. The built-up area subdivision follows the boundaries of what is considered Sunderland itself; the built-up area, is also known as Wearside, including Chester-le-Street and third is the council area which is similar in size to Wearside, without Chester-le-Street. The latter two include other surrounding towns and villages, the most notable being the town of Washington.

The city is bounded by the Tyne & Wear Green Belt, with its portion in much of its surrounding rural area of the borough. It is a part of the local development plan, of which its stated aims are as follows:

In the Sunderland borough boundary, as well as the aforementioned areas, landscape features and facilities such as much of the River Don and Wear basins, the George Washington Hotel Golf and Spa complex, Sharpley Golf Course, Herrington Country Park, Houghton Quarry and Penshaw Hill are within the green belt area.

Sunderland has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb). Its location in the rain shadow of the Pennines, as well as other mountain ranges to the west, such as those of the Lake District and southwestern Scotland, make Sunderland one of the least rainy cities of Northern England. The climate is heavily moderated by the adjacent North Sea, giving it cool summers, and winters that are mild considering its latitude. The closest weather station is in Tynemouth, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Sunderland. As a result, Sunderland’s coastline is likely slightly milder given the more southerly position. Another relatively nearby weather station in Durham has warmer summer days and colder winter nights courtesy of its inland position.