River Wear
| Wear | |
| River | |
 |
|
| Country | England |
|---|---|
| Counties | County Durham |
| Metropolitan County | Tyne and Wear |
| Towns/Cities | Stanhope, Wolsingham, Bishop Auckland, Willington, Durham, Chester-le-Street, Sunderland |
| Source | |
| - location | Wearhead, County Durham, UK |
| - elevation | 340 m (1,115 ft) |
| - coordinates | 54°45′00″N 2°13′21″W / 54.750°N 2.2225°W |
| Mouth | |
| - location | North Sea, UK |
| - elevation | 0 m (0 ft) |
| - coordinates | 54°54′58″N 1°21′28″W / 54.916°N 1.3577°WCoordinates: 54°54′58″N 1°21′28″W / 54.916°N 1.3577°W |
| Length | 96 km (60 mi) |
 Map of the Wear
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The River Wear (/ˈwɪər/,WEER) in North East England rises in the Pennines and flows eastwards, mostly through County Durham to the North Sea in the City of Sunderland. At 60 mi (97 km) long, it is one of the region's longest rivers, wends in a steep valley through the cathedral city of Durham and gives its name to Weardale in its upper reach and Wearside by its mouth.
The Wear rises in the east Pennines, an upland area raised up during the Caledonian orogeny. Specifically, the Weardale Granite underlies the headwaters of the Wear. Devonian Old Red Sandstone in age, this Weardale Granite does not outcrop but was surmised by early geologists, and subsequently proven to exist as seen in the Rookhope borehole. It is the presence of this granite that has retained the high upland elevations of this area (less through its relative hardness, and more due to isostatic equilibrium) and accounts for heavy local mineralisation, although it is considered that most of the mineralisation occurred during the Carboniferous period.
It is thought that the course of the River Wear, prior to the last Ice Age, was much as it is now as far as Chester-le-Street. This can be established as a result of boreholes, of which there have been many in the Wear valley due to coal mining. However, northwards from Chester-le-Street, the Wear may have originally followed the current route of the lower River Team. The last glaciation reached its peak about 18,500 years ago, from which time it also began a progressive retreat, leaving a wide variety of glacial deposits in its wake, filling existing river valleys with silt, sand and other glacial till. At about 14,000 years ago, retreat of the ice paused for maybe 500 years at the city of Durham. This can be established by the types of glacial deposits in the vicinity of Durham City. The confluence of the River Browney was pushed from Gilesgate (the abandoned river valley still exists in Pelaw Woods), several miles south to Sunderland Bridge (Croxdale). At Chester-le-Street, when glacial boulder clay was deposited blocking its northerly course, the River Wear was diverted eastwards towards Sunderland where it was forced to cut a new, shallower valley. The gorge cut by the river through the Permian Magnesian Limestone can be seen most clearly at Ford Quarry. In the 17th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1990), reference is made to a pre-Ice Age course of the River Wear outfalling at Hartlepool.
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