Wallsend
Encyclopedia
Wallsend is an area in North Tyneside
North Tyneside
The Metropolitan Borough of North Tyneside is a metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England and is part of the Tyneside conurbation. Its seat is Wallsend Town Hall....

, Tyne and Wear
Tyne and Wear
Tyne and Wear is a metropolitan county in north east England around the mouths of the Rivers Tyne and Wear. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Wallsend derives its name as the location of the end of Hadrian's Wall
Hadrian's Wall
Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain. Begun in AD 122, during the rule of emperor Hadrian, it was the first of two fortifications built across Great Britain, the second being the Antonine Wall, lesser known of the two because its physical remains are less evident today.The...

. It has a population of 42,842.

Romans

In Roman times, Wallsend hosted the fort Segedunum. This fort protected the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall
Hadrian's Wall
Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain. Begun in AD 122, during the rule of emperor Hadrian, it was the first of two fortifications built across Great Britain, the second being the Antonine Wall, lesser known of the two because its physical remains are less evident today.The...

. In dedication to the Romans, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 signs are dotted throughout the town.

19th century to present

Several urban sanitary districts were formed in the parish in the late 19th century : Willington Quay
Willington Quay
Willington Quay is an area in the borough of North Tyneside in Tyne and Wear in northern England. It is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne, facing Jarrow, and between Wallsend and North Shields. It is served by the Howdon Metro station in Howdon. The area from 2006 onwards has been an...

, Howdon
Howdon
Howdon is a place in Tyne and Wear, England.Howdon is an area in the eastern part of Wallsend, a former coal-mining and shipbuilding town on the north banks of the River Tyne....

 and Wallsend itself. The first two joined to form the Willington Quay urban district
Urban district
In the England, Wales and Ireland, an urban district was a type of local government district that covered an urbanised area. Urban districts had an elected Urban District Council , which shared local government responsibilities with a county council....

 under the Local Government Act 1894
Local Government Act 1894
The Local Government Act 1894 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The Act followed the reforms carried out at county level under the Local Government Act 1888...

, with the portion of the parish outside any urban sanitary district forming the parish of Willington
Willington, Tyne and Wear
Willington is a village in Tyne and Wear, England. It has an industrial estate.The place-name derives from Old English tun of Wifel's people, and appears in 1085 as Wiflintun, and as Wiuelington in 1204....

 in Tynemouth Rural District
Tynemouth Rural District
Tynemouth was a rural district in the English county of Northumberland.It was created by the Local Government Act 1894 based on the Tynemouth rural sanitary district...

. Wallsend became incorporated as a municipal borough
Municipal borough
Municipal boroughs were a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002...

 in 1901, and in 1910 took over Willington Quay and Willington, and also part of the parish of Longbenton
Longbenton
Longbenton is a district of North Tyneside, England. It is largely occupied by an extensive estate originally built as municipal housing by Newcastle City Council in the 1950s and 1960s. It is served by the Tyne and Wear Metro stations Longbenton Metro station and Four Lane Ends Metro Station...

.

Shipbuilding

Wallsend has a history of shipbuilding
Shipbuilding
Shipbuilding is the construction of ships and floating vessels. It normally takes place in a specialized facility known as a shipyard. Shipbuilders, also called shipwrights, follow a specialized occupation that traces its roots to before recorded history.Shipbuilding and ship repairs, both...

 and was the home of the Wigham Richardson
Wigham Richardson
The Wigham Richardson shipbuilding company was named after its founder, John Wigham Richardson , the son of Edward Richardson, a tanner from Newcastle upon Tyne, and Jane Wigham from Edinburgh.-History:...

 shipyard, which later amalgamated to form Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson
Swan Hunter
Swan Hunter, formerly known as "Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson", was one of the best known shipbuilding companies in the world. Based in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, the company was responsible for some of the greatest ships of the early 20th century — most famously, the RMS Mauretania which...

, probably best known for building the RMS Mauretania
RMS Mauretania (1906)
RMS Mauretania was an ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson at Wallsend, Tyne and Wear for the British Cunard Line, and launched on 20 September 1906. At the time, she was the largest and fastest ship in the world. Mauretania became a favourite among...

. This express liner held the Blue Riband
Blue Riband
The Blue Riband is an unofficial accolade given to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the record highest speed. The term was borrowed from horse racing and was not widely used until after 1910. Under the unwritten rules, the record is based on average speed...

, for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

, for 22 years.

Other famous ships included the RMS Carpathia
RMS Carpathia
RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson. Carpathia made her maiden voyage in 1903 and became famous for rescuing the survivors of after the latter ship hit an iceberg and sank on 15 April 1912...

 which rescued the survivors from the Titanic in 1912, and the icebreaker Krasin
Krasin (1916 icebreaker)
The first icebreaker Krasin was built for the Imperial Russian Navy as Svyatogor. She had a long, distinguished career in rescue operations, as well as a pathfinder and explorer of the Northern Sea Route...

(launched as Sviatogor) which rescued the Umberto Nobile
Umberto Nobile
Umberto Nobile was an Italian aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships during the Golden Age of Aviation between the two World Wars...

 expedition on Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

 in 1928, when Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen
Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the first Antarctic expedition to reach the South Pole between 1910 and 1912 and he was the first person to reach both the North and South Poles. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage....

 perished. The story is retold in the movie The Red Tent
The Red Tent
The Red Tent is a novel by Anita Diamant, published in 1997 by Wyatt Books for St. Martin's Press. It is a first-person narrative that tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph, a talented midwife and proto-feminist. She is a minor character in the Bible, but the author has...

, starring Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...

 and Peter Finch
Peter Finch
Peter Finch was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a...

.

Charles Parsons
Charles Algernon Parsons
Sir Charles Algernon Parsons OM KCB FRS was an Anglo-Irish engineer, best known for his invention of the steam turbine. He worked as an engineer on dynamo and turbine design, and power generation, with great influence on the naval and electrical engineering fields...

 launched his revolutionary Turbinia
Turbinia
Turbinia was the first steam turbine-powered steamship. Built as an experimental vessel in 1894, and easily the fastest ship in the world at that time, Turbinia was demonstrated dramatically at the Spithead Navy Review in 1897 and set the standard for the next generation of steamships, the...

here in 1884, thus not only revolutionising the navies of the world, but also, through the large-scale production of affordable electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...

, making a significant contribution to the modern age. He features in a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 film called The Inventor of the Twentieth Century.

Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...

 worked at Swan Hunter in 1916-17, and used it as background for his great anti-utopian work We
We (novel)
We is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First...

 which was a major influence on George Orwell's
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

-Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...

.

WWII ships built here include HMS Sheffield
HMS Sheffield (C24)
HMS Sheffield was one of the Southampton sub class of the Town-class cruisers of the Royal Navy during the Second World War. She took part in actions against several major German warships. Unlike most Royal Navy ships of her time, her fittings were constructed from stainless steel instead of the...

 and HMS Victorious
HMS Victorious (R38)
HMS Victorious was the second Illustrious-class aircraft carrier ordered under the 1936 Naval Programme. She was laid down at the Vickers-Armstrong shipyard at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1937 and launched two years later in 1939...

 which took part in the sinking of the Bismarck
German battleship Bismarck
Bismarck was the first of two s built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind the German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched nearly three years later...

. Other ships built there include the new Ark Royal in the 80's

The shipyard closed in 2007. The former Wallsend Slipway & Engineering Company
Wallsend Slipway & Engineering Company
Wallsend Slipway & Engineering Company Ltd was formerly an independent company, located on the River Tyne at Point Pleasant, near Wallsend, Tyne & Wear, around a mile downstream from the Swan Hunter shipyard, with which it later merged.-History:...

 Shipyard continues to operate, constructing offshore oil rigs and as a TV studio, productions from there include the hit ITV drama Vera starring Brenda Blethyn and Inspector George Gently starring Martin Shaw.

Coal mining

Much of Wallsend's early industry was driven by coal mining. The Wallsend Colliery consisted of 7 pits which were active between 1778 and 1935. In the 1820s the pits became incorporated as Russell's Colliery, which then became The Wallsend and Hebburn Coal Company Ltd. By 1924 the colliery employed 2183 people. Its most prominent manager was mining and railway engineer John Buddle
John Buddle
John Buddle was a self- made mining engineer in North East England, becoming one of the leading mining engineers of his day...

 who helped develop the Davy Lamp
Davy lamp
The Davy lamp is a safety lamp with a wick and oil vessel burning originally a heavy vegetable oil, devised in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy. It was created for use in coal mines, allowing deep seams to be mined despite the presence of methane and other flammable gases, called firedamp or minedamp.Sir...

.

Between 1767 and 1925 there were 11 major incidents recorded at the colliery resulting in over 209 deaths. On 18 June 1835 a gas explosion in one of the tunnels killed 102 miners. The youngest was 8 years old and the oldest 75 years old. Many of the dead bodies were found with their cloth caps in their mouth. This was believed to be an attempt to stop the inhalation of the gas which eventually killed them. The bodies were extracted and buried in St.Peters churchyard at the top of the bank overlooking the Wallsend Burn. A plaque has been erected within the churchyard to commemorate this tragedy.

Recent history

The town has expanded greatly in terms of housing since the end of World War II, and since the 1960s.
Wallsend Town Centre - including the main shopping area (Known as the "Wallsend Forum") - is in fact to the west of the land covered by the town. To the north of this area lies the older estate of High Farm and the new estate of Hadrian Lodge. The town centre of Wallsend is separated from the eastern areas of the town by Wallsend Burn, a stream runs through a small glacial valley running north-west to south-east until it flows into the River Tyne. To the east of the Burn is the old area of Holy Cross (that contains the ruins of a medieval church), the pre-war estate of Rosehill and the (mainly) post-war estate of Howdon. To the south of Howdon lies Willington Quay which, as it name suggests, once served shipping but which is now dominated by industry and housing. East Howdon forms a small enclave between Willington Quay and North Shields.

The town's principal thoroughfare and shopping street is the High Street. To the north of this street is Wallsend Green, the town's most picturesque area, consisting of large houses surrounding a green square. Behind the Green, the Burn runs through the parkland of the Hall Grounds, to Wallsend Park, a traditional British municipal park, whose restoration has frequently been demanded by local residents. Work on this restoration is due to start soon with many improvements such as a skate/BMX park, better pathways, and a rebuilding of the Duffy Memorial Fountain.

The town is home to Wallsend Boys Club
Wallsend Boys Club
Wallsend Boys Club is an English youth football club based in Wallsend, North Tyneside. The club is well-known for producing professional footballers, with 65 players from the club having gone on to play professionally.-History:...

, an association football club, which has produced many famous players such as Alan Shearer
Alan Shearer
Alan Shearer OBE, DL is a retired English footballer. He played as a striker in the top level of English league football for Southampton, Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle United and for the England national team...

, Lee Clark,Steve Watson Peter Beardsley
Peter Beardsley
Peter Andrew Beardsley MBE is an English former footballer who played between 1979 and 1999. He once set a record transfer fee in the game and represented his country 59 times between 1986 and 1996, once as captain...

 Robbie Elliot, Mick Tait and Michael Carrick
Michael Carrick
Michael Carrick is an English footballer who plays as a midfielder for Manchester United and the England national team. He has made more than 300 Premier League appearances and played in 50 UEFA Champions League games as of April 2011...

. It is also hometown and birthplace to internationally successful musician, Sting.
Wallsend Metro Station serves the town and, in honour of the Roman fort, has Latin and English signs.

Notable citizens

  • Paul Kennedy
    Paul Kennedy
    Paul Michael Kennedy CBE, FBA , is a British historian at Yale University specialising in the history of international relations, economic power and grand strategy. He has published prominent books on the history of British foreign policy and Great Power struggles...

     - Historian
  • Brian Laws
    Brian Laws
    Brian Laws is an English former footballer and manager, most recently of Burnley.Playing as a defender, Laws made over 100 appearances for each of Burnley, Middlesbrough, and Nottingham Forest. In 1994, Laws became player-manager of Grimsby Town before taking a similar position with Scunthorpe...

    - Footballer & Manager
  • Andrew Leslie
    Andrew Leslie (shipbuilder)
    Andrew Leslie was a Scottish shipbuilder.Born in 1818 in Garth, Dunrossness, Shetland to Christian Allison and Robert Leslie, Leslie later moved to Aberdeen. In 1853 Leslie relocated to Hebburn in North-East England where he founded the shipbuilding company A. Leslie and Company. When Andrew...

     - Shipbuilder
  • Kevin McDine
    Kevin McDine
    Kevin McDine is an English darts player, currently residing in Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire. He competes in Professional Darts Corporation events and SupaMc is currently ranked 37th on the PDC Order of Merit....

     - Darts Player
  • John McKay (UK politician)
    John McKay (UK politician)
    John McKay was a British Labour Party politician.He was elected as Member of Parliament for Wallsend at the 1945 general election, and was re-elected at four subsequent elections until his retirement at the 1964 general election...

     - MP for Wallsend 1945 - 1964
  • Ochre
    Ochre (musician)
    Ochre is the stage name of English electronic musician Christopher Leary. The name "Ochre" was originally adopted as the title for Leary's academic work while studying audio production at Newcastle College, as a variation of "Oaker", being the name of a street in Manchester where Leary spent his...

     - Electronic Musician
  • Michael Carrick
    Michael Carrick
    Michael Carrick is an English footballer who plays as a midfielder for Manchester United and the England national team. He has made more than 300 Premier League appearances and played in 50 UEFA Champions League games as of April 2011...

     - Footballer
  • T. Dan Smith
    T. Dan Smith
    Thomas Daniel Smith was a British politician who was Leader of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council from 1960 to 1965. He was a prominent figure in the Labour Party in the north east of England, such that he was nicknamed 'Mr Newcastle'...

     - Regional Politician
  • Paul Stephenson - Footballer
  • Sting - Musician
  • Alan Thompson - Footballer
  • Chris Thorman
    Chris Thorman
    Christopher Thorman is a professional rugby league player currently playing for York City Knights in the Co-Operative Championship]and previously Hull in the Engage Super League...

     - Rugby League Player
  • Venom (band)
    Venom (band)
    Venom are an English heavy metal band that formed in 1979 in Newcastle upon Tyne. Coming to prominence towards the end of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Venom's first two albums—Welcome to Hell and Black Metal —are considered a major influence on thrash metal and extreme metal in general...

     - Band
  • Steve Bruce
    Steve Bruce
    Stephen Roger "Steve" Bruce is an English football manager and former player. Born in Corbridge, Northumberland, he was a promising schoolboy footballer but was rejected by a number of professional clubs. He was on the verge of quitting the game altogether when he was offered a trial with Gillingham...

     - Footballer and Football Manager
  • Steve Watson
    Steve Watson
    Steven Craig "Steve" Watson is a former English footballer, who retired after being released by Sheffield Wednesday on 15 May 2009. As of November 13, 2010, he is the Development Coach at Football League One side Huddersfield Town.-Playing career:Watson began his career with Newcastle United,...

     - Footballer
  • Jocky Wilson
    Jocky Wilson
    John Thomas Wilson known as "Jocky" Wilson, is a former Scottish darts champion. He retired from the game in 1995.Wilson was twice World professional Darts Champion in 1982 and 1989...

     - Darts Player
  • Richard Gaddes
    Richard Gaddes
    Richard Gaddes is an English-born opera company administrator based in the United States.-Career in England:Gaddes was born in Wallsend, England. He studied at Trinity College of Music in London. At Wigmore Hall, London’s famed recital hall, he created a series of lunchtime concerts designed to...

    - Opera Administrator

External links

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