Charleton describes Shieldfield Green as an area where troops congregated prior to a battle with the Scots in 1547. The fort which stood nearby (HER 285) was a key position during the siege of 1644. Charleton also tells the story of King Charles I playing golf on the green during his captivity in Newcastle (see HER 1865). An attempt was made to stage horse racing on the Shield Field in 1658 but the authorities intervened. Officially enclosed in 1738 - reflects the changed shape of the green from a long rectangle to a triangle. By 1750 most of the land had been adopted by adjacent landowners.

Presumed rectilinear enclosure identified on an aerial photograph of 1946 by Steve Speak. It is not seen on any aerial photographs from later dates suggesting that conditions during the 1946 survey were unusually clear. Lies just north of Holystone Farm and south of the Seaton Burn Wagonway (HER 1065).
This feature was investigated during trial trenching in 2018 {4} (trenches 58 and 59), and found to be a combination of modern drainage cuts and pronounced furrows, which produced the rectilinear cropmark. It is located in a wet part of the field, and no archaeological features were identified.

Sunderland's direct involvement in whaling began in 1774 when "Hazard" sailed from the Wear. She was withdrawn after three voyages. "Blackett" sailed to the whaling grounds in 1785. Ten vessels were employed as whalers between 1785 and 1798. "Jenny's Adventure", 163 tons, was owned by Thomas Weatherall, brazier, and William Friend, ironmonger. In contrast "Leviathon" was owned by two of the Wear's principal shipowners, Ralph Marshall and James Robinson. Other notable Sunderland whalers were "Blackett", "Horn", "Urania" and "Sunderland". Few of the owners had had any connection with Arctic whaling before 1786, although John and Robert Barry had acquired their whaling skills at Whitby. "Urania" was wrecked off Greenland in 1790 with 2000 seals on board. Between 1793 and 1798 only one or two vessels per season were sent to the whaling grounds. "Sunderland" was captured by a French privateer off Shetland in 1795. "Ariel" and "Hunter" and the lease on the whale oil yard at Hylton and wharves and warehouses at Monkwearmouth Shore were advertised for sale in 1798. They were sold to the Hull whaling fleet and many Sunderland whalermen moved with them. John and Robert Barry abandoned whaling to develop a shipowning company, at a time when Newcastle had renewed its interest in the Greenland whaling trade.

Howdon was a centre of blubber boiling and whale bone processing. Ships from here hunted near Greenland. Souvenir whalebone arches and vertebrae from these voyages were set up in the area. Samuel Hieronymus Grimm [who made a living from accompanying the well-to-do on their travels and recorded his journeys in pen-and-ink drawings] drew a stile made of whale ribs at Howdon Pans in the eighteenth century {1}. In December 1749 Captain Jonathan Blagdon advertised in the local newspapers asking for minimum subscriptions of £100 to finance the creation of a whaling company. In 1751 there were more advertisements calling for subscriptions to finance the creation of the Newcastle Whale Fishing Company. Sir Walter Blackett MP, subscribed, as did Ralph Sowerby, mayor of Newcastle and many councillors and aldermen. The Newcastle Whale Fishing Company was formed on 4 December 1751, and they purchased "Swallow", 297 tons for £2000. She returned to the Tyne in July 1752 with four Greenland whales. Two more vessels were added to form a whaling fleet - "Resolution", 420 tons and "Dolphin", 390 tons. In 1755 John Baker & Co and Edward Mosley & Co., merchants and aldermen, also entered into the trade. They had two vessels - "Robert", 268 tons and "Phoenix", 260 tons. Newcastle became the principal outport in the Greenland trade between 1756 and 1765. Trinity House collected tax from whale owners at a rate of 2 pence per ton of bone and blubber. Francis Hurry, who had begun building ships at Howdon in 1758, took an interest in Greenland whaling in 1764 with Thomas Airey, whose daughter he had married. On the foreshore, on the east side of Howdon Burn, were facilities for whale bone cleaning and blubber boiling and storage facilities for harpoons, lines etc. Their first ship was "Newcastle", 340 tons, but she was burnt down in 1766. "John and Margaret", "Royal Exchange" and "Annabella" were added to the fleet by 1765. "Annabella" was wrecked in 1768 and "Royal Exchange" in 1773 [although she had returned to Howdon in 1768 with twelve whales and 2300 seals]. By 1766 Newcastle was in decline as a whaling port, and Whitby had re-emerged. By 1830 the whaling trade in Newcastle was dominated by one person, Thomas Richard Batson. He was the sole owner of two vessels - "Grenville Bay" and "Lord Gambier". He made huge profits in 1832-3. Greenland whaling had collapsed by 1820 so the ships were sailing to Baffin Bay, Davis Straits, Lancaster Sound and Pond Inlet in Arctic Canada. "Lady Jane" was the best known Newcastle whaler, built in London in 1772 and transferred to Newcastle in 1804 by Matthew Plummer & Co. During her 50th journey to the Arctic in 1849, "Lady Jane" was crushed by ice at Melville Bay. The whaling enterprise from Tyneside was effectively over. "Volunteer", an iron-hulled screw-driven steamship, was the last Arctic whaler to sail directly from a North-East Port. She sank in 1859.

Site of the Bodle Well. The name comes from the fact that a charge was made for water. A bodle was a Scottish coin worth half a farthing. A bodle would have bought you a skeel or 4 gallons of water. The well was removed in 1938, but its name survives in the name Bodlewell Lane.

Boiler shell recorded in Council depot opposite almshouses in 1993.

The present hall was built around 1750 for John Simpson, who acquired the estate through marriage into the Anderson family. Simpson's granddaughter married Lord Ravensworth, for whom John Dobson altered the Hall in 1813 (he moved entrance to east side). A formal garden was laid out to the west of the hall in 1840s. The two gatehouses also date to this time. In 1894 John Bell Simpson acquired the estate. In the mid 20th century the walled garden became a commercial nursery. In 1980s the hall was subdivided into apartments and the stables and outbuildings converted into houses.

Two (tentative) Mesolithic sites were found by a team from Newcastle University, on a training diving session for the Submerged Prehistoric Landscapes Project in August 2003. This site, on the edge of the inner reef, 8m below sea level comprised of a basal segment of obliquely pointed microlith (2.5cm), a large thick blade (5.8cm), a large core with blade removals (4.5m), a flat patinated scraper (4 x 3.3cm), three scrapers, a small scraper/retouched flake, a large chunky blade with cortex (7cm), small scraper/retouched flake and a blade segment. 14 probable retouched flakes/blades, 8 possible retouched pieces, 2 flint nodules, 1 quartz flake. The depth correlates with the early Mesolithic coastline and the material is clearly early Mesolithic (or possibly even earlier). The blade size suggests the possibility of a LUP date. The microlith basal segment supports an early Mesolithic date. The assemblage includes a variety of different raw material. Some is very fresh, although others have been water-rolled. Some of the material had been exposed relatively recently from possible stratified sites e.g. By lobster action (several lobster burrows near to this location).

Two (tentative) Mesolithic sites were found by a team from Newcastle University, on a training diving session for the Submerged Prehistoric Landscapes Project in August 2003. This site, in the intertidal zone up to 4m below sea level, included 13 definite cores, 4 probable cores, 1 5.2cm endscraper, 2 retouched flakes, 1 scraper, 10 retouched pieces, 11 nodules with probable flake removals, 17 probable worked nodules, 33 small nodules and 25 probable flakes. The material is small in size, and most pieces are very worn and rolled. Several of the cores are 'worked out'. Two cores are of a different raw material, possibly discarded when raw material suppies were replenished. Evidence of bipolar working. The large endcsraper fits more easily within an early Mesolithic (or even Late Upper Palaeolithic) assemblage.

Summers (1885) states that "anciently there was a religious house, chapel, or chantry dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Sunderland near the Sea, within the parish of Wearmouth". It is not known when or by whom this house was founded, but Summers gives a plan dated 1715 which shows the area now occupied by Queen Street East as "Chapel Hill". In 1535 the Valor Ecclesiasticus of Henry VIII records a "cantaria b'te marie virgin in Sunderland juxta mare" valued at £3-13s-4d.