Early, ancient and Medieval The earliest
inhabitants of the Sunderland area were
Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Artefacts 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 ( 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. Roman artefacts have been recovered in the River Wear at
North Hylton, including four stone anchors, which may support the theory there was a Roman dam or port on the River Wear. lands in the
Dark Ages; the land was Anglicised over time and merged into
Northumbria. Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to , when an
Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, was granted land by King Ecgfrith and 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 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 biblical scholar
Henry Julian White (1859–1934) 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 under the name of the borough of Wearmouth by
Hugh Pudsey, then the
Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-
monarchical power within the
County Palatine of Durham). 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 built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported. 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). In 1634 a market and yearly fair charter was granted by Bishop
Thomas Morton. Morton's charter acknowledged that the borough had been called Wearmouth until then, but it
incorporated the place under the name of Sunderland, by which it had become more generally known. Before the outbreak of the
English civil war, the North, with the exception of
Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), the area around Sunderland itself being taken in March of that year. One artefact 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'. A
tonnage duty was levied on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds. There were 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. A number of warships were built, along with many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. Ships built in Sunderland were known as 'Jamies'. 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). 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. 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). 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'. 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. ', depicting Wearmouth Bridge of 1796 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 below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots.
"The greatest shipbuilding port in the world" 's Shipyard at North Sands, ; described as the greatest ship designer of his age, he built more than 100 ships in wood and almost as many in iron. 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 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 residential 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. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. 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. 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.
20th Century 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 the town being a target in a 1916
Zeppelin raid. Monkwearmouth was 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. By 1936 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. Luftwaffe raids resulted in the deaths of 267 people and destruction of local industry while 4,000 homes were also damaged or destroyed. 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 674AD, 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. 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.
City status 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 former
Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre was cleared for further development opportunities. 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. ==Government==