South Tyneside · Town
South Shields
A Roman supply base at the mouth of the Tyne, a Victorian seaside resort, and the town that shaped Britain's best-selling novelist.
Arbeia: gateway to the wall
The Roman fort of Arbeia was built at South Shields to guard the mouth of the Tyne and supply the garrisons strung along Hadrian's Wall with grain and equipment landed here by ship. Its reconstructed gateway and excavated remains, open to visitors today, make it one of the most complete Roman sites anywhere in the North of England.
Salt, coal and the sea
Long after Rome, South Shields grew rich first on medieval salt-panning, then on coal shipping, and later on marine engineering and fishing, as Tyne Dock and the surrounding yards expanded through the 19th century into a major centre for trade and shipping on the river.
In the year Catherine Cookson died, South Shields Museum reported that nine out of ten books borrowed from British public libraries were written by her — an extraordinary reach for a writer who grew up in poverty in the town's Tyne Dock streets.
Catherine Cookson's town
South Shields also gave Britain one of its most-read novelists. Dame Catherine Cookson, born in the Tyne Dock area in 1906, drew on her own hard early life there for dozens of best-selling novels; at the time of her death in 1998, it was reported that nine out of every ten library books borrowed in Britain were written by her. A museum trail in the town now traces the streets that inspired her fiction.
South Shields today
The wide sands of Sandhaven and Littlehaven beaches, a long seafront promenade, and the passenger ferry across to North Shields give South Shields the feel of a proper seaside town, alongside its long working history at the mouth of the Tyne.
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Quick facts
- Borough
- South Tyneside
- Historic county
- County Durham
- Location
- Mouth of the Tyne & North Sea
- Population (settlement)
- ~75,000
- Known for
- Arbeia, Catherine Cookson, beaches