St Mary's Cathedral

The church was built in the 1840s to a neo-Gothic design by architect August Welby Pugin, famous for his work on the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. It was paid for by halfpenny donations from the poorest community of immigrants on Tyneside, and was enhanced in the following decades by bequests from the Dunn family: the Dunns are remembered in several windows. Very recently it has been further beautified by bequests from various benefactors, most notably from Martin Ballinger (d.2007), who paid for the new floor and organ (installed in 2012-13).