The Sunderland Cottage

A History of Wearside's 'Little Palaces'

Victorian Sunderland developed a unique form of housing to accommodate its hardworking population. Resembling a terraced bungalow, the distinctive ‘Sunderland cottage’ became the town’s dominant housing type during the nineteenth century. Early examples were built for Sunderland’s many shipyard workers and opened the door to home ownership for skilled artisans and their families. Well loved by local residents, these unique homes are now recognised as an important and distinctive approach to housing Britain’s urban population. Even today, Sunderland cottages represent the backbone of working-class communities across the city. This book examines the development of the Sunderland cottage, tracing the evolution of the form and its place within the town’s social and architectural history. The research draws upon an extensive collection of building plans, which reveal for the first time that these modest homes were in fact designed by leading Sunderland architects and share their provenance with the finest buildings in the city. The text is illustrated with photographs taken especially for this volume, along with building plans and archival images. The Sunderland Cottage: A History of Wearside’s ‘Little Palaces’ will serve as a valuable guide for Sunderland residents eager to know more about their own homes, and anyone with an interest in Britain’s nineteenth and early twentieth century housing.