I was born in Sunderland in the 1970s, and my mam and dad lived in a small flat in an old brick Victorian terrace just a short walk from Sunderland general hospital. At that time, all the shipyards and coalmines that employed thousands of people were closing and a once-thriving industrial town was on the decline.
Just eight miles away from Sunderland, inland along the river Wear, there was a village called Washington. Washington Old Hall, in the heart of the old village, was the ancestral settlement of the Washington family, from which the first president of the United States, George Washington, descended. Hence why Muhammad Ali visited in the 1970s and why President Jimmy Carter visited in 1977, planting a tree on the village green. I was three years old, so I can’t remember it.
