Map - South Tyneside (South Tyneside)

South Tyneside is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, North East England.

It is bordered by all four other boroughs in Tyne and Wear – Gateshead to the west, Sunderland in the south, North Tyneside to the north, and Newcastle upon Tyne to the Northwest. The border county of Northumberland lies further north. The borough was formed on 1 April 1974 by the merger of the County Borough of South Shields along with the municipal borough of Jarrow and the urban districts of Boldon and Hebburn from County Durham.

Part of the Tyneside conurbation, the sixth largest in the United Kingdom, South Tyneside has a geographical area of 64.43 km2 and an estimated population of 153,700 (Mid-year 2010), measured at the 2011 Census as 148,127. It is bordered to the east by the North Sea and to the north by the River Tyne. A Green Belt of 23.64 km2 is at its southern boundary.

The main administrative centre and largest town is South Shields. Other riverside towns are Jarrow and Hebburn, while the villages of Cleadon, Whitburn and The Boldons border the South Tyneside green belt, with Wearside to the south at Sunderland.

South Tyneside is represented by two Members of Parliament with two constituencies: South Shields (including Whitburn) and Jarrow (which also serves Hebburn, the Urban Fringe villages and eastern parts of Gateshead).

Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, the early 20th century arrival of the Arabs and more recently the settling of people from the Commonwealth, notably the Indian sub-continent, and the European Union reflect the present-day culture of South Tyneside.

In South Shields (Arbeia, Brythonic: Caer Urfa), excavations and a reconstructed fort are found at Arbeia (AD 160). This fort served as a garrison and an outpost of the Roman Empire, and is part of Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site. The hospitality strip at Ocean Road is famed throughout the region for its Indian, Italian, Middle Eastern and Chinese cuisine. Mill Dam, with former Customs House (now a theatre, cinema and arts complex), cobbled lanes and Mission to Seafarers centre, stands tribute to the long and proud history of shipping in the town and the River Tyne.

Bede's World in Jarrow (Gyrwe) is dedicated to the life of the Venerable Bede, the 'Father of English History'. The nominated World Heritage Site is straddled by two rivers – the Tyne and the Don. There is a medieval monastery (St. Paul's Church, AD 681), an Anglo-Saxon farm with rare-breed animals and buildings constructed in original materials from that period, and the Georgian Jarrow Hall. The Jarrow Crusade of 1936 was a key event in the town's history and the original banner carried by the marchers to London can be viewed at Jarrow Town Hall.

There has been a fairly sizeable Arab community in South Shields since the 1890s. This is also one hypothesised explanation of the term "Sandancer" (derived from "sand dancer") for people born and brought up in South Shields.