Castletown is a suburb of Sunderland in

Tyne and Wear Tyne and Wear () is a metropolitan county in North East England, situated around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It was created in 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with five metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead, Newc ...

, England. A former mining community, the Hylton Colliery was located at the east end of the village; it lies north of the River Wear, and is near to

Hylton Castle Hylton Castle ( ) is a stone castle in the North Hylton area of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England. Originally built from wood by the Hilton (later Hylton) family shortly after the Norman Conquest in 1066, it was later rebuilt in stone in ...

and

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. At Hylton Riverside, on the eastern fringe of Castletown, there is a large retail park. There is a large-scale redevelopment project, aimed at modernising the former pit houses and the area around the Aviary Estate. Since 2011 there have been further developments in the east part of the village. The Aviary area has been completely demolished and a new housing estate has replaced both sides of the main street. This site was re-developed by the

Gentoo Group Gentoo may refer to: * Gentoo penguin, a species of bird. * Gentoo Linux, a computer operating system distribution named after the penguin. * Gentoo (file manager), a free file manager for Linux and other Unix-like systems. * Gentoo (term) Gent ...

. At the opposite end of Castletown is the newer development of Fulford Grange. Currently, the records state that Castletown is the least ethnically diverse area in Sunderland, with 99.3% of the population being white. Despite its proximity to Sunderland, until 1967 this colliery village was under the administrative control of Durham County Council and was part of the Sunderland Rural District Council. This was because it was a fairly isolated community until the extensive council house building of the fifties and sixties at the Red House, Hylton Castle and Town end Farm Estates effectively joining the settlement to the rest of Sunderland's new northern suburbs. The

Northern Spire Bridge The Northern Spire Bridge is a bridge over the River Wear in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England. The crossing opened to pedestrians on 28 August 2018, before opening to traffic the next day. A two span cable-stayed structure, construction began in ...

, joining Castletown to

Pallion Pallion is a suburb and electoral ward in North West Sunderland, in Tyne and Wear, England. Most of the buildings in the area were built during the Victorian Era and consist of large terraced houses built for shipbuilders, but also smaller one-s ...

, opened in August 2018. During the search for the

Yorkshire Ripper Peter William Sutcliffe (2 June 1946 – 13 November 2020) was an English serial killer who was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper (an allusion to Jack the Ripper) by the press. Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting t ...

, the accent of "

Wearside Jack Wearside Jack is the nickname given to John Samuel Humble (8 January 1956 – 30 July 2019), a British man who pretended to be the Yorkshire Ripper in a hoax audio recording and several letters during the period 1978–1979. Humble sent a tape ...

", the author of a hoax letter claiming to be from the Ripper, was identified by the forensic linguist Stanley Ellis as that of the Castletown area. The hoaxer was eventually revealed to have come from nearby

Pennywell Pennywell is one of the UK's largest post-war social housing schemes, and is situated in the central-west area of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, North East England. Pennywell is the largest local authority housing estate in the City of Sunderland. ...

References

{{T&W places City of Sunderland suburbs Mining communities in England Sunderland