Sunderland Barracks

In early 1794 the Corporation of Sunderland petitioned for a barracks to be built in the town to protect the colliery trade from the possibility of a French attack; and they provided land for this purpose alongside the Town Moor. were built with speed using timber construction and were ready and occupied by July that same year. They stood at one end of the High Street, which ran for almost a mile between the barracks in the east and Bishopwearmouth Church in the west. Initially, they were located at the tip of the headland where the River Wear met the sea (with a mid-18th-century gun battery positioned beyond the barracks to seaward) until, in the 1840s, Hudson Dock was built on reclaimed…