Wearside

Wearside
Wearside Location of Wearside in England
Coordinates: 54°54′14″N 1°22′52″W
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Country	England
Region	North East
Population  (2011)
• Total	335,415
Time zone	GMT (UTC)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+1 (BST)

Wearside (/ˈwɪərsaɪd/) is an area of North East England centred on the continuous urban area of Sunderland by the River Wear, and in the wider sense, including separate neighbouring settlements such as Seaham.

The Wearside conurbation, defined by the ONS as the Sunderland Built-up Area, has a population around 335,415 and includes two major settlements, Sunderland and Washington, as well as many smaller settlements which form part of the continuous urban area, including Whitburn, Hetton-le-Hole, Bournmoor, South Hetton, Springwell Village, Ouston, Pelton, Chester-Le-Street and Houghton-le-Spring. Most of this area forms the local government district named the City of Sunderland which has a lower population of 280,807.

Economy

Like other parts of the North East, Wearside and Sunderland were economically structured by the primary and secondary sector of the economy; with a great deal of the economy once dependent on ship building at Sunderland Docks and coal mining with large collieries such as Monkwearmouth Colliery, which declined rapidly during the mid 20th century, many areas have long been deprived with vast areas of unemployment as a result. The city of Sunderland and parts of Wearside have been slowly rejuvenated over the years and industry is now largely based around call centres, although many areas such as Easington still face social problems today.

Media

The Sunderland Echo is the newspaper of Wearside and is sold throughout the area and available online. The other main online news source for Wearside is BBC North East and Cumbria. BBC Radio for the area is broadcast by BBC Newcastle on 95.4FM. Local commercial radio is broadcast by 103.4 Sun FM for Wearside and 107 Spark FM for the City of Sunderland. Metro Radio broadcasts across Tyne and Wear with Heart North East broadcasting across the whole of the north east of England. TV news is for the whole north east region and broadcast by the BBC from its Newcastle studios or ITV Tyne Tees from its studios in Gateshead.

Sport

The Wearside Football League is one of the levels in the English football league system and contains amateur teams such as Easington Colliery A.F.C. and Seaham Red Star F.C.. The only professional football team located in the area is Sunderland A.F.C., a team based in Sunderland.

External links

• BBC Wear
• Wearside online