Wallsend, United Kingdom

Several urban sanitary districts were formed in the parish in the late 19th century: Willington Quay, Howdon and Wallsend itself. The first two joined to form the Willington Quay urban district under the Local Government Act 1894, with the portion of the parish outside any urban sanitary district forming the parish of Willington in Tynemouth Rural District. Wallsend was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1901, and in 1910 took over Willington Quay and Willington, and also part of the parish of Longbenton.

St Peter's Church, Wallsend (Church of England) has four fine stained glass windows by Michael Healy of An Túr Gloine: St Patrick, St Peter and St Luke (1913); Our Lord with the Nativity and the Shepherds (1919); Angel of the Resurrection with St George and St Christopher (1921); Our Lord walking on water (1921); and a window by Ethel Rhind, also of An Túr Gloine, depicting The Good Shepherd, Mary of Bethany, David (1921).

Wallsend has a history of shipbuilding and was the home of the Wigham Richardson shipyard, which later amalgamated to form Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson, probably best known for building the RMS Mauretania. This express liner held the Blue Riband, for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, for 22 years.

Other famous ships included the RMS Carpathia which rescued the survivors from the Titanic in 1912, and the icebreaker Krasin (launched as Sviatogor) which rescued the Umberto Nobile expedition on Spitzbergen in 1928, when Roald Amundsen perished. The story is retold in the movie The Red Tent, starring Sean Connery and Peter Finch.

Charles Parsons launched his revolutionary Turbinia here in 1894, thus not only revolutionising the navies of the world, but also, through the large-scale production of affordable electricity, making a significant contribution to the modern age. He features in a BBC film called The Inventor of the Twentieth Century.

Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin worked at Swan Hunter in 1916–17, and used it as background for his great anti-utopian work We which was a major influence on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

World War II ships built here include HMS Sheffield and HMS Victorious which took part in the sinking of the Bismarck. Other ships built there include the new HMS Ark Royal in the 1980s.

The shipyard closed in 2007. The musical The Last Ship by Sting is set in the shipyard. The former Wallsend Slipway & Engineering Company Shipyard continues to operate, constructing offshore oil rigs and as a TV studio: productions from there include the hit ITV drama Vera starring Brenda Blethyn and Inspector George Gently starring Martin Shaw.

Much of Wallsend's early industry was driven by coal mining. The Wallsend Colliery consisted of seven pits which were active between 1778 and 1935. In the 1820s the pits became incorporated as Russell's Colliery, which then became the Wallsend and Hebburn Coal Company Ltd. By 1924 the colliery employed 2,183 people. Its most prominent manager was mining and railway engineer John Buddle who helped develop the Davy Lamp.

Between 1767 and 1925, there were 11 major incidents recorded at the colliery resulting in over 209 deaths. In 1821, a gas explosion resulted in 52 deaths. On 18 June 1835, a gas explosion in one of the tunnels killed 102 miners, the youngest of whom was aged eight and the oldest 75. Many of the dead were found with their cloth caps in their mouths. This is believed to have been an attempt to prevent inhalation of the gas which eventually killed them. The bodies were extracted and buried in St Peter's churchyard at the top of the bank overlooking the Wallsend Burn. A plaque has been erected within the churchyard to commemorate this tragedy.

In 1969, the Rising Sun Colliery in Wallsend was closed. It was the last Tyneside colliery on the north bank of the river.

The town has expanded greatly in terms of housing since the end of World War II, and since the 1960s.