Drawing by Peter Ryder
Bishopwearmouth Townscape Heritage Scheme
Sunderland City Council secured £1.9m in funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2018 to deliver the Bishopwearmouth Townscape Heritage Scheme. The scheme enhanced the historic built environment through repair and conservation of historic buildings and the redevelopment of Minster Park. Alongside work to reinvigorate this part of Sunderland City Centre, a programme of activities enabled people to find out more about the heritage of the area. The collection of oral histories was an important part of the project.
Bishopwearmouth is now part of Sunderland’s busy city centre, but it began as a small village. It was organised around a central village green and parish church and surrounded by fields. This artist’s impression of the village is based on information taken from a survey done by the Bishop of Durham’s estates in 1381.
By 1897 the village had been swallowed up by the growing town of Sunderland, as can be seen in this map. The map shows St Michael’s Church, which became Sunderland Minster after city status was granted to Sunderland in 1992. The footprint of the streets of Littlegate and Southgate are reflected in the layout of a new sensory area created in Minster Park as part of the Townscape Heritage Scheme, and The Green remains.
Reproduced from the 1897 Ordnance Survey map
Minster Park opened in August 2020 and was a finalist in the Northern Design Awards and Landscape Institute Awards in 2021.
Minster Park lies within the Bishopwearmouth Conservation Area. It contains a registered village green and is adjacent to the Grade II* listed Sunderland Minster and Grade II listed Mowbray Almshouses. The park was once the heart of Bishopwearmouth village. The people who were interviewed as part of the Townscape Heritage Scheme are the last generation who remember mid-twentieth century Bishopwearmouth and their memories provide an important record of what the area was like at this time.
As part of the Townscape Heritage Scheme a sound art project was produced by Theatre Space North East. Members of the local community were trained as actors and recorded imagined conversations with local characters, based on real events from the past. Click here to meet the folk who have lived in Bishopwearmouth through the centuries.
You can find more information about the heritage of Bishopwearmouth at sunderland.gov.uk/bishopwearmouth
Barry (in the pram) and Jennifer in Bishopwearmouth in the 1950s
Barry and Jennifer
Brother and sister Barry and Jenny lived in Church Lane and went to Green Terrace School in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Aerial photo from the 1970s showing Carter Street, now demolished
Irene and Kathleen
Sisters Irene and Kathleen lived in Carter Street in the 1950s.
Jim remembers playing in ‘the church’, now Sunderland Minster
Jim and Pauline
Siblings Jim and Pauline lived in Carter Street in the 1950s.
Burton’s Aunt and Uncle married at Sunderland Minster
Burton
Burton was born in the early 1950s in Crow Street, where he lived with his family.
Carol’s Grandparents house was bombed during the Second World War, this image shows bomb damage to Church Lane
Carol
Carol lived in Bishopwearmouth until she was four. Most of her memories of the area come from visiting her Grandmother, who lived there until the mid-1960s.
High Street West in 1985, just after John moved to Sunderland
John
John moved to Sunderland in 1982 and shares his memories of the music scene and pubs in Bishopwearmouth at the time.
Terry and his brother at a Christmas party in Bishopwearmouth. Photo from the Sunderland Echo.
Terry
Terry’s first home was in Littlegate, where he lived in the early 1950s.
Steve’s family lived at 3 The Green, the house with the white door frame
Steve
Steve lived at 3 The Green for the first year of his life. His Grandmother and Auntie continued to live there until it was demolished, when he was around 12 years old.