The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded Sunderland City Council £1.9m to deliver the five-year Bishopwearmouth Townscape Heritage Scheme in Sunderland City Centre. Our Northest Office were commissioned by Sunderland City Council to record memorial stones and architectural masonry fragments, monitor of groundworks associated with the scheme, which takes in the area immedicately surrounding the medieval church of St. Michael.

Our team recorded a number of headstones from the burial ground and a commemorative plaque from the, now demolished, Bowes Almshouses which stood at the southern end of the park. The inscription was erected to mark restoration work to the almshouses in 1875 and it is intended the plaque will be displayed within a new central seating area.

Archaeological monitoring was undertaken of the demolition of the boundary wall of the cemetery, an area of topsoil stripping for a compound and footpath diversion and the area of the proposed ‘amphitheatre’ and a wall footing to the south of the steps to the south of the churchyard.

The work revealed that structural remains survived from 18th–19th century buildings to the south of the churchyard, and that the churchyard itself originally extended beyond the current boundary.

At least eight burials were uncovered during the works and were recorded before being carefully covered, to protect them from the contruction works, and left in situ. Disarticulated bone representing a minimum of six adults, seven children and an infant was also recorded and was reinterred on the site.