Sunderland

Sunderland, a seaport, municipal, county, and parliamentary borough and market-town of Durham, situated at the mouth of the Wear, 13 miles NE. of the city of Durham and 12 SE. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The township of Sunderland is on the south side of the river, covering an area of 219½ acres, and forms but a small portion of the municipal borough, which comprises also the townships of Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth, and Monkwearmouth Shore. Monkwearmouth appears in history in 674 as the site of a monastery erected by Benedict Biscop (q.v.), and Bishopwearmouth in 930 as one of the places conferred by Athelstan on the monks of Lindisfarne then settled at Chester-le-Street. The earliest indubitable reference to Sunderland itself does not occur till 1311. Sunderland is a fine, well-built town, with broad, clean streets and pleasant suburbs. Till the beginning of the 19th century Sunderland was a very inconsiderable place, but since then, owing to the improvement of the harbour and the growth of the Durham coal trade, it has developed with great rapidity. The principal public buildings and institutions are the town-hall, a fine new building in the style of the Italian Renaissance, erected 1887-90; the Free Library, Museum, Art Gallery, and Winter Garden (1877-79); Sunderland Literary Society and Subscription Library (1878); the Theatre Royal (1853); the Avenue Theatre; the Victoria Hall, the scene of the terrible disaster of June 16, 1883, in which 182 children lost their lives (1872); the Assembly Hall; the Workmen's Hall (1868); the Liberal Club (1839); the County Constitutional Club (1890); the Infirmary (built 1865; enlarged 1879-87); the Orphan Asylum (1860). There are twenty churches in the borough (seventeen belonging to the Church of England and three to the Roman Catholic Church). St Peter's, Monkwearmouth, retains in a part of the tower and west wall of the nave a remnant of the 7th-century building. There are between fifty and sixty chapels and meeting-houses in the borough belonging to the various dissenting bodies. Sunderland possesses in the People's or Mowbray Park an excellent recreation-ground. The portion south of the railway was purchased in 1854, and contains monuments of Havelock and Jack Crawford. The portion north of the railway, called the New or Extension Park, was purchased in 1866. The village of Roker, a popular watering-place close to Monkwearmouth, also has a park of 17 acres, opened in 1880. Two single-arch iron bridges cross the Wear at a distance of 20 yards from each other. The older bridge, having the large span of 236 feet, was built 1793-96. It was reconstructed and widened under the direction of Robert Stephenson in 1858-59. The railway bridge was opened for traffic in 1879. The harbour is formed by two piers, the one on the north being 617 yards long, that on the south 650 feet. A new pier, starting from the south end of the terrace promenade at Roker, is over 2000 feet long. Two other piers protect the entrance to the south docks. There are four docks at Sunderland capable of accommodating the largest vessels—the North Dock (6 acres), the Hudson Dock, North (18 acres), the Hudson Dock, South (14 acres), the Hendon Dock (11 acres). Over 208,000 tons of shipping are registered at the port of Sunderland, and in 1890, 6052 vessels of 2,342,161 tons cleared from it. The annual shipments of coal and coke for the last few years reached upwards of 4,000,000 tons. From the commissioners' staiths 15,000 tons can be shipped in a day. Other exports are bottles and glass, earthenware, lime, iron, chemicals, patent fuel, and cement. The principal imports are timber, props, iron ores, chalk, loam, grain, flour, esparto grass, hay, straw, and tar. Sunderland is famous for its iron shipbuilding-yards, of which there are as many as thirteen on the river. During 1890 eighty-six vessels, registering 125,612 tons, were launched on the Wear. In 1889 the tonnage launched was 217,366. There are also in the town extensive ironworks, forges, anchor and chain works, glass and bottle works, chemical works, roperies, paper-mills, breweries, and lime-kilns. In Monkwearmouth is the Pemberton coal-pit, 381 fathoms deep, several of the workings extending under the sea. Sunderland returns two members to parliament. Pop. of parliamentary borough, (1851) 67,394; (1881) 124,760; (1891) 142,248, of whom 131,015 were in the municipal and county borough. Havelock was born at Ford Hall, Bishopwearmouth (1795); Jack Crawford, the hero of Camperdown (1775-1831), at Sunderland; and other natives were Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., Tom Taylor, and Swan the electrician.