Leechmere House, the lost Sunderland manor that gave its name to the current road

We know Leechmere Road to be a long winding route which connects Silksworth, Plains Farm and New Tunstall down towards Grangetown. We most typically associate this area with the present ASDA supermarket and its industrial estate. The suburb around it was built in the 1930s as part of the UK’s earliest social housing schemes, marking a steady transition of the population base away from the East End of the town.

Before Sunderland spread outwards, however, a great deal of land in the city consisted of private manor estates and farms which throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s were gradually displaced and demolished. These included for example, Farringdon Hall, Thorney Close Hill, Grindon Hall and so on. Their names were subsequently carried over to the new estates which replaced them. These halls typically emerged in the Middle Ages and Elizabethan era.

Leechmere is no different. Before the suburb was built, a former manor estate on the land also existed known as “Leechmere Hall“. Its origin is posed to be around that of the 16th century, or late Tudor era and its location was on the site of what is now Edgmond Court just next to Toll Bar Road. It was a grand facility which had sprawling gardens and an artificial lake, as well as a number of buildings known as “Summerhouses.” One of these summer houses, built around 16th century, was left in ruins by the 20th century and visible on a purported aerial photograph.

By the 19th century, a man known as Robert Weightman worked as the farmer at Leechmere House. Notable Sunderland shipbuilders John Hutchinson and George Shaw Wrightman also lived there at various points. However, as the 20th century emerged, the old Sunderland Manor estates declined as the “Sunderland Corporation” (council housing group) gained legal powers to procure land in order to build new housing states as part of poverty alleviation schemes.

Leechmere Hall became a home for injured and sick miners, but this ended with the closure of Ryhope Colliery. It was later then demolished in order to build more of the new estate over it. Certain ruins of the hall, including its entrance, are still purportedly visible in the grass areas around it.