SILKSWORTH AND TUNSTALL

In The Great War

Silksworth was originally situated in County Durham and was a small parish of farms with a population of 400. Tunstall was an adjacent parish and they shared the same church. In 1868 Lord Londonderry began his works to construct a colliery. The colliery first produced coal in 1872. In those four years a whole village was built and inhabited by people for many parts of the country. The new village was called New Tunstall and was within the parish of Silksworth. Within ten years the village population bloomed to 4000 and by 1901 was 5300. Almost all of the male population worked in the colliery. About 500 were in Silksworth where some worked on the Hetton Railway and in colliery related occupations, the remainder were agricultural workers. As time progressed the edges of the parish was eaten away by the adjacent town of Sunderland as each area became one of it’s suburbs. New Tunstall became New Silksworth as it is today and it is located within Sunderland in the Metropolitan County of Tyne and Wear.

Miners Banners

St Mathews Church

School photograph

The Drill hall