Shiremoor is a village in Tyne and Wear, Northern England. It is in the Metropolitan Borough of North Tyneside and formerly governed under Northumberland. In the 2011 census, it was included in the Tynemouth area of Tyneside. It is near the North East Green Belt, which surrounds Tyneside, Wearside and Durham. It is located around from Whitley Bay. It was built for miners of local colliery pits. The village is made up of smaller areas which were built there in the 20th and 21st centuries. The oldest two areas of the village are Bertram Grange and Old Shiremoor. Park Estate, Leeches Estate, and Shiremoor centre were built later as the village expanded. It has a population of 4,782. In the early 2000s, Northumberland Park was built: this area, Backworth and West Allotment are in the same ward as the village. History The village was originally named Tynemouthshire Moor, in reference to its location on the common of the manor of Tynemouth, which was enclosed in 1790. Coal mining and quarrying had already begun in the area by this time, and the village developed through the late 18th and early 19th century to house miners from the local pits. From the mid-19th century, Shiremoor was served by the Blyth & Tyne Railway with two stations, Prospect Hill, which opened in 1841, and Backworth, which opened in 1847. Both stations closed to passengers in 1864, and the line survives today as part of the Waggonways walking and cycling network. However, a second Backworth station was built on a new line, which opened in 1864 and operated until 1977, when it was closed as part of construction of the Tyne & Wear Metro. From 11 August 1980, Shiremoor had its own Metro station, newly built to the east of the site of that station. As the coal industry in the area declined in the mid- and late-20th century, Shiremoor saw little growth. However, with the opening of Silverlink Retail Park in the 1990s and Cobalt Business Park, the UK's largest, in the early 2000s, Shiremoor was well placed to develop as a commuter town. In the early 2000s, work began on the Northumberland Park estate, one of the largest residential developments to have been undertaken by North Tyneside Council. In addition to new housing, the estate also included two new retail parks as well as a new Metro station on the site of