The name was recorded in the early 12th century as Suthewick, by the 16th century as Suddick. It comes from Old English suþ for south or southern, and wic for a dwelling or a specialised farm. South dwelling, then, an unromantic but precise label for a settlement on the south-facing slope above the Wear. Quarrying took place here from medieval times, but the trade only became significant in the 17th century when larger quarries were dug into the magnesian limestone and wagonways were built to transport the stone to the river. The wagonways were the local prototype for the railways that would later carry Durham coal to the same waterfront. Southwick was a township and chapelry within Monkwearmouth parish, becoming a civil parish in 1866 and then being absorbed by Sunderland on 1 April 1928.

Glassmaking arrived at Suddick Glasshouse in 1698 and stayed because the riverside location offered cheap coal from upstream and easy export to the rest of the country down the Wear. The Wearmouth Crown Glassworks followed in 1786, producing the kind of distorted-disc window glass that gave Georgian houses their characteristic optical shimmer. The Southwick Bottleworks took over the bottle trade from 1846 onwards and provided substantial employment until it closed in 1917. The technology evolved, the products diversified, but the basic equation held: skilled workers, cheap fuel, a navigable river to ship the output. By the time the bottleworks shut, the same equation was already being broken by competition from larger, more mechanised factories elsewhere.

Shipbuilding probably went on at Southwick well before any official records, but the first registered shipbuilder was Henry Debord, who was in business from 1785 to 1797. The defining firm came later. William Pickersgill and Sons Ltd opened a yard in Southwick in 1845 and stayed for nearly a century and a half. The yard merged with Austin's in 1954 and was redeveloped at a cost of £3 million, a major investment for British shipbuilding in the post-war years. Pickersgill turned out cargo ships, tankers, and bulk carriers from this stretch of the Wear, but the slow collapse of British shipbuilding in the 1970s and 80s caught up with even the rebuilt yard. It closed in 1988. The site stands silent, the slipways gone, the cranes scrapped. Across the river the Stadium of Light now stands where another shipyard used to be.

Southwick still centres on its village green, the old commercial heart of what was once a separate settlement before Sunderland swallowed it. Three Grade-listed structures cluster here: a World War II war memorial, the Tramcar Inn (a public house built in 1906), and a memorial lamp-post from 1912. They are the visible markers of a community that survived being annexed. Across the river to the south stands Sunderland AFC's Stadium of Light, looming as a constant reminder of the city Southwick is now part of. A primary school remains; there is no longer a secondary school. The Indices of Deprivation published by the Department of the Environment in 2000 listed Southwick as the most deprived of Sunderland's 25 wards, the fifth most deprived in Tyne and Wear, and the 55th in England. The river still flows past. The work has not yet come back.