Sunniside, Gateshead

Marley Hill is a former colliery village about six miles to the south west of Gateshead, near the border between Tyne and Wear and County Durham. It has been part of the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead since 1974. Prior to this it was part of Whickham Urban District. It lies within the Whickham South & Sunniside electoral ward of the Blaydon parliamentary constituency. Neighbouring towns and villages include Burnopfield (2 miles away); Sunniside, Gateshead (about half a mile away); Byermoor (just under a mile away). Marley Hill, Sunniside, Burnopfield and Byermoor all share Whickham's "NE16" postcode prefix, despite Burnopfield sitting just over the border in County Durham. The actual area considered to be Marley Hill for postal purposes etc. is actually much larger than it would first appear, as there were originally more houses to the south and south east, nearer the colliery. Birkheads Cottages and Hedley Hall Farm are the farthest properties away from the village itself, these being about a mile to the south-east. Hedley Hall Farm's address is anomalously listed as "Hedley Lane, Sunniside", despite actually being further away from Sunniside than Birkheads Cottages, whose addresses read "Birkheads Lane, Marley Hill".

Whickham School is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in Whickham (near Newcastle upon Tyne) in Tyne and Wear, England.Formerly Whickham Comprehensive School, it opened in 1962 as a replacement for the small, 'all-age' Victorian school in the village centre. A much larger school was required due to the large house-building programme that was taking place. It holds around 1700 pupils between the ages of 11-19 and has 300 members of staff. It offers a range of vocational and traditional qualifications at Key Stage 4 and 5, including GCSE, BTEC and A-Level.

Whickham Football Club are an English football club based in Whickham, Tyne and Wear, playing in the Northern League Division One in the English football league system. They won the FA Vase in 1981. The team plays its home matches at the Glebe Sports Ground, Rose Avenue, Whickham.

The Tanfield Railway is a 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge heritage railway in Gateshead and County Durham, England. Running on part of a former horse-drawn colliery wooden waggonway, later rope & horse, lastly rope & loco railway. It operates preserved industrial steam locomotives. The railway operates a passenger service every Sunday, plus other days, as well as occasional demonstration coal, goods and mixed trains. The line runs 3 miles (4.8 km) between a southern terminus at East Tanfield, Durham, to a northern terminus at Sunniside, Gateshead. Another station, Andrews House, is situated near the Marley Hill engine shed. A halt also serves the historic site of the Causey Arch. The railway claims it is "the world's oldest railway" because it runs on a section dating from 1725, other parts being in use since 1621. The railway is run by three bodies: "Friends of Tanfield Railway", "Tanfield Railway Trust" which owns the railway, the locomotives and rolling stock and "The Tanfield Railway Company" which operates the railway. "The Tanfield Railway Company" is split into four departments; each has a manager and director: Engineering who maintain locomotives, Operations including drivers and guards, Carriage & Waggon who preserve carriages, and Commercial which operates shops, events and the passenger side of operations.

Whickham is a village in Tyne and Wear, North East England. It is in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead. The village is on high ground overlooking the River Tyne and 5 miles (8 km) south-west of Newcastle upon Tyne. It was formerly governed under the historic county of County of Durham.

Causey Bank Mires is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Derwentside district of County Durham, England. It lies alongside and to the west of the Tanfield Railway, just under 1 km north of the Causey Arch. The site consists of a series of flushes with scrub, surrounded by acid and neutral grassland, a habitat with a restricted distribution in County Durham. A number of locally rare plant species are found in the area, including globe-flower, Trollius europaeus.

Causey is a village in County Durham, in England. It is situated a short distance to the north of Stanley.

Swalwell railway station served the village of Swalwell, Tyne and Wear, England from 1868 to 1960 on the Derwent Valley Railway.

Swalwell is a village in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, in the United Kingdom.

Derwenthaugh Coke Works was a coking plant on the River Derwent near Swalwell in Gateshead. The works were built in 1928 on the site of the Crowley's Iron Works, which had at one time been the largest iron works in Europe. The coke works was closed and demolished in the late 1980s, and replaced by Derwenthaugh Park.

Blaydon RFC is an English semi-professional rugby union team. The first team currently play in the fourth tier of the English rugby union system (National League 2 North), having been promoted as champions from North Premier at the end of the 2019–20 season. Their home ground is at Crow Trees, Swalwell, Tyne and Wear.

Byermoor is a village near Burnopfield and Sunniside in England. The village has a population of around 100 and contains a school (Sacred Heart) and a church. The village sits on the South side of the A692 on a ridge overlooking the Derwent Valley and the nearby village of Burnopfield. It lies just within the County of Tyne and Wear and is the last village on the old turnpike road to Wolsingham before it reaches the border with County Durham. Byermoor colliery occupied the area to the South of the church prior to closure in 1968, along with four terraces built to house its workforce. Nearest to the A692 were Double Row and New Row and beyond these, Pit Row and Furnace Row. The only one of these houses to survive is the former colliery manager's house that stood at the Eastern end of New Row and was considerably larger than the others. One of the colliery's reservoirs stood alongside this, and the site of the reservoir is now occupied by some small industrial units. The access road to these was originally built as access to Double Row and the colliery itself, while just to the South of this, the road that served New Row is still in place, albeit fenced off and overgrown from a couple of yards beyond the junction with the main road. The remaining housing sits to the North of the church and is made up mainly of semi-detached houses (Ravensworth Crescent, Gibside Crescent, Strathmore Crescent and Bowes Crescent) built by Whickham Urban District Council between 1920 and 1922, as well as a row of four houses constructed around the same time by John Bowes & Partners (at the time the owners of the colliery and the Bowes Railway) to house colliery officials. These are accessed via the lane that originally led to High Marley Hill School, and now continues only a short distance from the end of Bowes Crescent, before becoming a footpath leading to the still extant school building. The school was attended by non-catholic children from the village up until its closure in 1960 due to falling pupil numbers, a fate which also befell the nearby Marley Hill Primary School in 2010. The Collieries and associated coke ovens at Byermoor and Marley Hill were the only significant local sources of employment for the inhabitants of the village, with residents now travelling further afield by car or bus for work. Bus services from Consett and Stanley pass through the village on their way to Newcastle, some via the Team Valley and Gateshead town centre, and some via Whickham and the MetroCentre transport interchange, along with a single bus between Rowlands Gill and the Team Valley early on weekday mornings, returning via the same route in the evening. Although the village had a railway for many years, there was never a passenger service, with the only rail traffic being wagons to and from the colliery and coke ovens and coal traffic from other collieries passing through - either North on its way to the staithes at Jarrow, or unwashed coal from the screens at Marley Hill and Blackburn Fell heading South to the washery at the Hobson Pit about a mile away. This through traffic also ceased not long after the closure of the colliery when the Hobson Pit (which had for some time been the only remaining colliery on the line beyond Byermoor) ceased production later the same year.