Interesting Facts About South Shields

Ask anyone who grew up here and they will tell you South Shields punches well above its weight. This is a town of barely 75,000 people, tucked where the River Tyne meets the North Sea, yet its story takes in the Roman Empire, one of Britain's oldest Muslim communities, a world-famous novelist and a pub blasted out of a cliff face. Whether you have lived here all your life or you are just discovering the place, here are some of the most surprising facts about South Shields.

The name of the Roman fort may mean "place of the Arabs"

Long before the modern town existed, the Romans built a fort here to supply their troops on Hadrian's Wall. Arbeia is one of the most extensively excavated Roman military supply bases anywhere in the empire, and at its peak it held 22 granaries within its walls. The name itself is a genuine curiosity: its garrison towards the end included a unit of bargemen from the River Tigris, and many historians believe the Latin name Arbeia translates as "place of the Arabs". Today you can walk through a full-scale reconstructed West Gate on Baring Street, and admission is free.

Best for: Best for a free walk through 1,800 years of history right in the middle of town.

South Shields is home to one of Britain's oldest Muslim communities

That Roman coincidence feels all the more remarkable given the town's modern history. From the 1890s, Yemeni seamen from the British-ruled Aden Protectorate began settling around the riverside, and the first Arab seamen's boarding house opened in the Holborn district in 1909. The result is one of the oldest established Muslim and Arab communities in the whole of Britain. The Al Azhar Mosque, opened in 1972 on Laygate Lane, was among the first purpose-built mosques in the country. In 1977 Muhammad Ali visited the town and had his marriage blessed at the mosque, with thousands of people lining the streets to see him.

A world-famous novelist was born in Tyne Dock

Dame Catherine Cookson, one of the most prolific British novelists of all time, was born at 5 Leam Lane in Tyne Dock on 20 June 1906. She grew up in hardship, raised by her grandparents and believing her mother to be her sister, and did not publish her first novel, "Kate Hannigan", until 1950. She went on to write more than 100 titles and sold over 100 million copies worldwide, and was made a Dame in 1993. Her novels drew directly on the working-class Tyneside she knew as a child, and her name is stamped across the town to this day.

The town has a proud lifesaving heritage

South Shields sits on a notoriously dangerous stretch of coast, and its response was to pioneer volunteer sea rescue. The South Shields Volunteer Life Brigade was formed in 1866, one of the very first of its kind in the country, and its members were the first to save life from a shipwreck using the breeches buoy. The town is also home to the Tyne, Britain's second-oldest surviving lifeboat, whose crews rescued more than 1,000 stricken mariners across six decades of nineteenth-century service. She is preserved today at the Wouldhave Memorial on Ocean Road.

Best for: Best for understanding just how much this town has always looked out to sea.

There is a pub carved into a cliff by "Jack the Blaster"

Down at Marsden Bay stands one of the most extraordinary pubs in Europe. In 1782 a lead miner named Jack Bates, better known as Jack the Blaster, used explosives to hollow a small cave into a home in the cliff face. Over the centuries it grew into Marsden Grotto, a cave bar and seafood restaurant with a lift down to the beach and rooms cut into the rock itself. It looks out over Marsden Rock, a huge sea stack whose natural arch collapsed during the storms of 1996, leaving the towering stump you see today. The surrounding cliffs are an important breeding ground for kittiwakes, fulmars and gulls.

An unusual number of famous faces started life here

For a town its size, South Shields has produced a striking roll call. Film director Sir Ridley Scott, who gave us "Alien", "Blade Runner" and "Gladiator", was born here in 1937. Monty Python's Eric Idle was born in the Harton area in 1943, after his family were evacuated to the town during the Second World War. More recently, comedian Sarah Millican and X Factor winner Joe McElderry were both born here too. Not bad for one small coastal town.

Home to a striking modern "cathedral of words"

South Shields has never stopped reinventing itself. In 2016 it opened The Word, the National Centre for the Written Word, a bold circular building in the Market Place packed with interactive digital exhibits, a fabrication lab and a rooftop terrace, all free to enter. Around the corner at Mill Dam, The Customs House has been the town's arts hub since reopening as a theatre and cinema in 1994. And on the football side, South Shields FC, known as the Mariners, have become one of the best-supported non-league clubs in the country. Old town, new stories.

Best for: Best for a rainy afternoon that costs nothing at all.

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