South Shields St Hilda, Durham Family History Guide

South Shields, St Hilda is an Ecclesiastical Parish and a market town in the county of Durham, created in 1845 from Jarrow Ancient Parish.

Other places in the parish include: St Hilda.

Alternative names: South Shields

Parish church:

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1653
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1763

Nonconformists include: Baptist, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church of Scotland/Scottish Presbyterian, Independent/Congregational, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Society of Friends/Quaker, United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and Wesleyan Methodist.

Table of Contents

Adjacent Parishes

View Location on UK Great Britain, Ordnance Survey (1:1 million-1:10,560), 1900s – Full Screen

Parish History

South Shields. Market Cross by WHS Kingsway c1910

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

SHIELDS (South), a town, a township, five chapelries, a sub-district, and a district, in Durham. The town stands on the river Tyne, at the end of the ancient military way called the Wreken dyke, at the terminus of the Brandling Junction and the Stanhope and Tyne railways, opposite North Shields, 1 mile W of Tyne bar, and 8 E by N of Newcastle; adjoins a hill, called the Lawe, once insulated by the tide, and supposed to have been the site of the Roman station Ostia Vedræ.

It has yielded there and elsewhere Roman coins, inscribed stones, an altar, and remains of a hypocaust; took its present name from the “sliels” or huts of fishermen anciently on its site; went, after the Norman conquest, to the Dean and Chapter of Durham; became famous, about 1499, for salt-works, towards the close of the 17th century, for glass-works, in the 18th century, for chemical works, in 1789, for the invention of the lifeboat by Mr. Greathead; was no more than a village, with only 4 vessels, so late as about 1750.

It rose thence rapidly to the condition of a prosperous town; was made a parliamentary borough in 1832, and a municipal borough in 1850; consists, in both capacities, of the townships of South Shields and Westoe; was proposed, in the Boundary Commissioners’ report of 1868, to comprise a further area containing a pop. of about 15,000; sends one member to parliament.

It is divided into three wards, and governed by a mayor, 8 aldermen, and 24 councillors; is a seat of petty sessions and county courts; publishes two newspapers; occupies nearly all South Shields township and much of Westoe township; extends about 2 miles along the river; commands, from the Lawe Walk, a fine view of the coast and the sea; consists chiefly of a long, narrow, crooked old street, along the river’s bank, and of spacious, well built, new streets, on higher ground above.

It includes a large central market square; and has a head post-office in Market place, receiving post-offices in Fowler-street and at Tyne docks, railway-stations with telegraph, four banking offices, several chief inns, a town hall and market house built in 1768, a branch custom-house, a savings’ bank, a public newsroom, assembly-rooms, a theatre built in 1866 at a cost of nearly £8,000, a freemasons’ hall, an odd-fellows’ hall, baths and wash-houses built in 1854 at a cost of £3,000, five churches, sixteen dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel, an endowed school with £70 a year, a recently-formed nautical school, national and denomination schools, a literary and scientific institution, a mechanics’ institution with reading room and large library, a working-men’s institute with large library, master-mariners’ cottages, a dispensary, and a workhouse.

St. Hilda’s church dates from very early times; was mainly rebuilt at great cost in 1811; and retains its old tower. Trinitv church was built in 1834; St. Stephen’s, in 1846; and St. Mary’s, at a cost of £4,000, in 1863. A new post-office building was projected in 1869.

A weekly market is held on Saturday; and fairs on the market-days before 1 May and before and after 11 Nov., and on 24 June and 1 Sept.

Ship-building, boat-building, rope-making, sail-making, block-making, iron-working, glass-making, varnish-making, earthenware-manufacture, and brewing are carried on. Commerce also is extensive, particularly in the export of coal; but the port statistics are conjoint with those of North Shields, and have been given in our previous article. A pilot-tower is in the E, giving a lookout for vessels at sea.

A battery is on the Lawe, a little to the N of the pilot-tower; a pier, about ¼ of a mile long, runs eastward from between the Lawe and the Narrows; two long piers or breakwaters run out, the one from the South Shields side, the other from the vicinity of Tynemouth Castle, to an entrance nearly 2½ furlongs wide beyond Tyne bar.

Several dry docks are on the river’s bank; and Tyne dock, with a water-area of 15 acres and a depth of 24 feet, is in the extreme SW. A vast mass of ballast-hills extends along the E shore; was formed by deposition of ballast from vessels entering for cargoes; and is connected at two points near the river’s bank with railways.

The police force of the borough, in 1864, comprised 35 men, at an annual cost of £2,293. The crimes committed in 1864, were 37; the persons apprehended, 39; the known depredators and suspected persons at large, 195; the houses of bad character, 21. Electors in 1833, 475; in 1868, 1,211. Real property in 1860, £30,656; of which £917 were in gasworks. Amount of property and income-tax charged in 1863, £2,902. Pop. in 1851, 28,974; in 1861, 35,239. Houses, 4,443.

The township comprises 170 acres of land and 326 of water. Pop. in 1851, 9,625; in 1861, 8,973, of whom 919 were persons on board vessels. Houses, 1,209. The decrease of pop. arose from changes connected with the opening of Tyne docks, which are in Westoe township.

The chapelries are St. Hilda, Trinity, St. Stephen, St-Mary, and St. Mark; and were constituted in 1845, 1848, 1848,1863, and 1868. The livings of St. H., T., and St. Mary are vicarages, that of St. S. is a rectory, and that of St. Mark is a p. curacy, in the diocese of Durham. Value of St. H., £500; of T., £400; of St. S. and St. Mary, each £300; of St. Mark, £150. Patrons of the first four, the Dean and Chapter of D.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

Crime & Punishment

The following people from South Shields have been found in the records of the early 1900s of Criminals arrested at North Shields in Tynemouth Northumberland. The link will take you to the page on this site that lists details of their crimes and see what they looked like.

Christina Haggerty, South Shields, arrested for stealing money

Jane Agnes Duffy, South Shields, arrested for theft

Thomas Dodds labourer arrested for robbery

George Bamlett grocer arrested for assault

View All People from Durham County in the Collection Criminal Faces of North Shields

Parish Registers

Marriage Allegations

The following people have been recorded in the Hampshire Allegations for Marriage Licences granted by the Bishop of Winchester 1689 to 1837.

Newton, John, of H.M.S. Lady Jean [ sic ], 21, b., & Margaret Stockell, of South Shields, co. Durham, 21, sp , at Portsea, 28 June, 1801.

RIDDLE, William, of the transport, The Providence, 21, b., & Isabella Coulson, of Shields, co. Durham, 21, sp., at Alverstoke, 18 May, 1794.

YOUNG, James, of South Shields, co. Durham, master mariner, 29, b., & Selina Hobbs, of King’s Worthy, 28, sp., at K. W., 7 May, 1800. William Hobbs, of Winchester, victualler, bondsman.

Parish Records

FamilySearch

Administration

County: Durham
Civil Registration District: South Shields
Probate Court: Court of the Bishop of Durham (Episcopal Consistory)
Diocese: Durham
Rural Deanery: Chester le Street
Poor Law Union: South Shields
Hundred: Chester Ward
Province: York