As a port on the Wear, Sunderland grew from handling exports of coal from the Northumberland coal field. Coal went to London and the southwest as well as over the North Sea.
Along with coal, two related industries can be traced back to before the industrial revolution: glass making and pottery. These industries were present elsewhere in the northeast and indeed elsewhere in the UK. Glass was for bottles, for windows and tableware and, as the urban areas grew and prosperity spread from the fruits of industry, so the demand for all three types of glass grew. Sunderland's Wear Glassworks became a producer of national importance. Pottery tended to be earthenware for general use and was some glass tableware. However, Wear Flint Glass could boast the Marquess of Londonderry among its customers.
Like many coastal towns, Sunderland had a long history in shipbuilding and, alongside this, rope making was significant in the town. Ropes were also needed for railways where trucks were pulled along by static steam engines. Webster's rope works at Depford boasted the first machine-made rope in the country.
For shipbuilding, we can look to Austin and Pickersgill, Doxfords, J.L. Thompson and Sir James Laing & Son. In early days it was wood and sail, in particular keels to bring coal from the mines to the waiting colliers. The use of iron and steel and the advent of the steam engine enabled Sunderland's shipbuilding to boom in the mid nineteenth century making it one of the prime shipbuilding ports on the world. Decline followed boom and, with the exception of busy wars and short periods of catch up after the wars, the days of large scale shipbuilding on the Wear were numbered. I write in Vehicles to Vaccines of the last gasp with the combination into North East Shipbuilders Limited.
Sunderland was very far from lost, for Nissan chose to build its British motor car factory near to the town and this continues to prosper.
Further reading:
- Glen Lyndon Dodds, A History of Sunderland (Sunderland: Albion Press, 1995)
- Anthony Slaven, British Shipbuilding 1500-2010 (Lancaster: Crucible, 2013)
- How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World
- Vehicles to Vaccines
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