Second Terrace, Sunderland

Second Terrace, Sunderland, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

The village of Sunderland, on the promontory that is usually referred to as Sunderland Point was once a prosperous and thriving port where goods from the West Indies and Baltic were transhipped to smaller vessels and lighters. Robert Lawson is credited with developing the port with warehouses, an anchor smithy, a blockmakers and a ropewalk to serve visiting vessels.
Sunderland's history is inextricably tied up with the slave trade and many of the ships that moored here were carrying slaves, some of whom settled locally.
Lawson went bankrupt in 1728 but Sunderland continued to prosper until the late 1780's when the neighbouring port of Glasson Dock opened. Soon afterwards Sunderland became known as 'Cape Famine'.
The village enjoyed a revival in the early 19th. century as a bathing resort, at which time there were two inns in the village, but its relative isolation and the vagaries of the tidal causeway drove most visitors to nearby Morecambe.

And as a photographic location, perhaps in spite of, or partly as a result of its past Sunderland Point is completely, absolutely and totally unbeatable.