The forum is a citywide umbrella organization of history and amenity groups. It runs a wide and well-supported range of events and initiatives, including community lectures and guided walks, a major history fair and the city’s heritage open day programme. It also promotes specific ventures such as the recently completed street names project supported by Heritage Lottery funding.

The Forum runs a wide range of events and activities. It coordinates the Heritage Open Day programme across the city, offers a series of free community lectures at the university’s St Peter’s Campus every summer, and runs popular day conferences on a range of topics. Every two years, it promotes the hugely successful Sunderland Heritage Fair at Seaburn, with support from the council.

The ‘What's in a Name’ project, backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund, studied and recorded the origins and significance of street names across the city. The findings are online here. The book "What’s in a Name: Street Names of Sunderland" is available at local bookshops and from the Donnison School, Church Walk, Sunderland, for £9.99.

The Heritage Quarter is a regeneration project for the East End of Sunderland (the old port area bounded by the modern inner ring road).

This initiative, launched in 2010, embraces the history of Sunderland's East End, once the hub of a great industrial port. We aim to use the past to breathe new life into the district and lead an East End revival.

Sunderland Heritage Quarter is a broad-based collaboration to encourage and enable projects - private, public and voluntary - which celebrate and conserve East End history.

Sunderland City Council commissioned the Heritage Forum to produce a feasibility study on the Heritage Quarter concept in 2009. This report has now been approved by the council cabinet and has widespread support in local regeneration and heritage circles.

The Heritage Quarter is growing in close partnership with Living History North East, a regional history project based in the heart of Sunderland's East End. We are working closely with Sans Street Youth and Community Centre on an oral history and archaeology scheme aimed at young people.

- To promote regeneration in the East End of Sunderland

- To conserve, protect and interpret the historic environment of the district

- To improve and make accessible the area’s natural environment

- To work with other groups and the East End community as a whole to advance, facilitate and stimulate heritage projects

- To empower the local community, encourage greater cohesion and social inclusion, and foster local identity and capacity

- To reconnect the East End with the City of Sunderland

We are building a group of supporters from all backgrounds, from public, private and voluntary sectors, to add weight, expertise and enthusiasm to the Sunderland Heritage Quarter project.

We are promoting the Heritage Quarter locally, creating links with local residents, businesses and property owners.

We are raising funds for small heritage projects, starting with a young people's archaeology and oral history project, 2010-11, in partnership with Living History North East and the Sans Street Youth Centre.

Our project co-ordinator Lauren Daglish-Smith is based at the Donnison School. She is organising events and activities, and pulling together the many strands of heritage-related activity in the East End into a longer-term strategy.

Longer term we will:

- Stimulate conservation and re-use of threatened or decaying historic buildings and landscapes

- Promote heritage-focused activities for the whole of the East End community

- Improve footfall and communications in the East End, and join the campaign to reinstate the Wear ferry

- Make the East End home to a larger celebration of Sunderland's maritime heritage

DIGIT is a partnership between the Sans Street Youth and Community Centre and Living History North East. LHNE delivers the training in oral history, filming and film-editing. The archaeology is supervised by North East Archaeological Research Ltd. DIGIT was developed by Sunderland Heritage Quarter, which is a regeneration project sponsored by Sunderland City Council.

The DIGIT project runs for a year, September 2010 to August 2011, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund Young Roots programme and the Sir James Knott Trust.

Visit the new DIGIT microsite at:

Please join us at the start of this inspiring project. Whether you are a public, private or voluntary body, or a private individual, we welcome your support.

Contact us at info@sunderlandheritage.org.uk

Sunderland Heritage Quarter has a Facebook page, find us:

Here!

Fitz Architects
Michael Gray
Groundwork North East
Rev. Stephen Hazlett
Sandra Lane
Living History North East
Jessica May
Sans Street Youth and Community Centre
Sunderland City Council
John Tumman
Tyne and Wear Archives and Liz Rees, Chief Archivist
Councillor Denny Wilson
Alastair and Christine Yule

All Images and Text copyright of Dr Michael Johnson 2011.

If you have any questions, please contact Michael at:

michael.johnson9bw@talktalk.net

This guide offers useful techniques for research on any aspect of the history of Sunderland. It explains research methods used by local historians and suggests some of the most useful primary and secondary sources available. It takes time to build up research skills, but here are a few useful tricks of the trade.

Where should I look?

Sunderland has several public and private archives open to researchers. Good starting points are:

- Sunderland City Library and Art Gallery
- Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens
- Sunderland Antiquarian Society
- Living History North East at the Donnison School

Michael Johnson, author of the 'How To' guide.

This guide offers useful techniques if you wish to research the history of your house, street or other aspects of Sunderland architecture and landscape. Sunderland has a wealth of historically and architecturally significant buildings, from impressive monuments like the Empire Theatre and Langham Tower, to the distinctive workers’ housing known as ‘Sunderland cottages’. The guide outlines the major collections of architectural material and highlights sources that will help you uncover the fascinating history of Sunderland’s buildings.

Good starting points are:

- Talk to any friends, relatives or neighbours who have memories of your house. Gather as much first-hand information as you can, together with any surviving documents or photographs.

- Examine your house in detail. Take note of any distinguishing features such as decorative door or window fittings, distinctive fireplaces, coal-hatches or ash-bins. Try to determine if any rebuilding or refurbishment has taken place. Have any extensions been added? These can often be identified if the brick or stonework differs from the rest of the house.

- Read books on the history of housing to help you categorise your house. Pay particular attention to any stylistic features – are they classical, gothic etc? Notable publications include Stefan Muthesius’ The English Terraced House (1982) and M.J. Daunton’s House and Home in the Victorian City: working class housing 1850-1914 (1983). If your house is a vernacular building, a useful source is R. W. Brunskill’s Traditional Buildings of Britain: an introduction to vernacular architecture and its revival (2004).

- Consult historic street directories to determine roughly when your house or street was built. Historic maps can also be used in this way. For further advice on using directories and maps please consult Researching Sunderland’s History – a ‘How to’ Guide elsewhere on this site.

- Once you have a rough date of construction, it may be productive to examine the minute books of Sunderland Borough Council’s building committee. From 1848 onwards, plans for new buildings and alterations had to be submitted to the Council for approval. These plans are now preserved in the Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle, and should reveal which builder was responsible for erecting your street and which architect, if any, designed it. Please be aware that the rural districts outside the borough of Sunderland did not begin submitting plans until some time later.

- The Tyne and Wear Archives have a collection of Sunderland street plans. These provide detailed technical drawings of street layouts and individual houses, as well as documenting the various architects, builders and tradesmen responsible for construction. However, these plans have not yet been thoroughly indexed, so you will need to ask the archivists for guidance.

For those interested in other aspects of Sunderland’s architecture, including public, commercial and religious buildings, there is a vast range of sources available. A number of public and private archives house information on local architecture.

- Sunderland City Library and Art Gallery
- Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens
- Sunderland Antiquarian Society
- Durham County Record Office
- Living History North East
- Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle

Click on the thumbnail images below to reveal the full image.

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See below for links to our partner organisations

We can be found at:

The Old Donnison School
Church Walk
East End
Sunderland
SR1 2BN

If you would like to ask us a question directly, please complete the form below and click 'Submit'. We will reply to your message as soon as we can. Thanks!