Sunderland Docks is an area of Sunderland,

Tyne and Wear Tyne and Wear () is a metropolitan county in North East England, situated around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It was created in 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with five metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead, Newc ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Home to the

Port of Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...

, the docks have access to the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...

. Sunderland City Council took over the port in 1972 and since then deindustrialisation has caused the port to decline.

History

The Sunderland Dock Company was formed in 1846 and was chaired by Sunderland's

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

George Hudson George Hudson (probably 10 March 1800 – 14 December 1871) was an English railway financier and politician who, because he controlled a significant part of the railway network in the 1840s, became known as "The Railway King"—a title conferr ...

MP. On 27 July 2018, a man was killed in an explosion at the docks. A spokesman for

Northumbria Police Northumbria Police is a territorial police force in England. It is responsible for policing the metropolitan boroughs of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and the City of Sunderland, as well as the ceremonial c ...

said that "The police were made aware that a man had died in a suspected industrial accident on Prospect Row, at Sunderland Docks. The man was named as dock worker Brendan Eccles, a 61-year-old grandfather from

Billingham Billingham is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, England. The town is on the north side of the River Tees and is governed by Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council. The settlement had previously formed i ...

. In 2019, the incident was investigated and examined by Sunderland City Council who produced a review into health and safety issues. In 2020, a Greenpeace ship staged a protest off the coast of the docks.

Politics

Sunderland Docks is part of the Sunderland Central

parliamentary constituency An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other poli ...

Popular culture

In 2021, scenes for the TV series Vera was filmed at the port.

References

City of Sunderland suburbs 1846 establishments in the United Kingdom Maritime history of the United Kingdom Sunderland Ports and harbours of County Durham {{TyneandWear-geo-stub