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Seaham Hall, Seaham Hall began life as Seaham House which now forms the western half of the hall and was owned by the Milbanke family. The hall was bought by the third Marquess of Londonderry in 1821 and extended in the 1850s. Seaham Hall, Today Seaham Hall is a beautiful luxury spa hotel. In 1815 the famed poet Lord Byron (1770-1845) was married at Seaham and resided at this hall, his bride being Lady Ann Isabella Milbanke whose father was the owner.

Glass Beach near Seaham Hall. The marriage was not a happy one and the unfortunate bride was later ridiculed in one of Byron’s poems as ‘Lady Millpond’. The ever-gloomy Byron, who was one of the biggest celebrities of the era, does not always seem to have enjoyed his time at Seaham; in a letter to his friend Moore, he complained: “Upon this dreary coast we have nothing but county meetings and shipwrecks; and I have this day dined upon fish, which probably dined upon the crews of several colliers lost in the late gales”.

The beautiful coast at Seaham, not far from Seaham Hall. Today the coast at Seaham is far from ‘dreary’ and is a beautiful escape for people from across County Durham and beyond who come to enjoy the unique Durham Heritage coast.

Seaham, above the North Beach heading towards Vane Tempest beach. About half a mile along the dene to the west of the hall, the coastal railway line crosses the road (called Lord Byrons Walk) at a level crossing. Alongside is a private white-coloured house dated ‘1875’ that was part of a former private railway station that once belonged to the Londonderrys.

Seaham, north side near the North Beach. The coastal area near St Mary’s Church and Seaham Hall includes the Vane Tempest Beach and the North Beach with an area of land above the beach nearby set aside for a mole sanctuary with a curious nearby sign marking the site.

Famous Moles, Seaham. Seaham Harbour. Shipwrecks involving colliers may have been a very common feature of the North East coast in Byron’s day but Seaham itself was then a bystander to the busy North East sea coal trade. Coal in the eastern part of Durham lay deep underground, beneath the rolling magnesian limestone escarpment and was yet to be exploited. In fact until a test sinking at Haswell in 1811 proved its existence, many actually doubted if there was any coal in East Durham at all.

The first deep mine beneath the limestone was opened at Hetton in 1821 and a ‘coal rush’ soon followed in East Durham that brought mines and industry and rapidly expanding villages. All of this was spurred on with the help of railways and the newly developed locomotives that facilitated the rapid and efficient movement of the ‘black gold’.

Seaham Beach with Sunderland in the distance. Coal was big business and made the coal owners – usually already wealthy landowners – ever more wealthy still. When the Marquess of Londonderry purchased the Seaham estate it had been his intention to exploit coal and develop a new coal port. To own coal mines was one thing; to own the port that controlled its shipment took things to a new level.

Londonderry had initially entered into negotiations with the Commissioners of the River Wear at Sunderland to obtain exclusive rights to the river for exporting coal there. He was refused. He angrily claimed that when his new town was built he would “see grass grow in the streets of Sunderland” but although he would successfully build his town at Seaham, Sunderland would also continue to prosper.

Blue plaque outside former Londonderry offices, Seaham. Nevertheless, the Marquess of Londonderry’s immense wealth continued to grow and his newly built palace-like hall of Wynyard (commenced near Stockton in 1822) was a testament to his power and riches.

Former Londonderry Offices, Seaham. It was in the early 1820s that the plans for developing the port and harbour at Seaham were drawn up by the engineer William Chapman (with some later input from the architect John Dobson) and the first stone was laid by Londonderry on November 28, 1828.

A new industrial town was built around the harbour and by 1831 the first coal was being shipped. The collier brig that held the honour of shipping the first coal was called The Lord Seaham, named of course from Londonderry himself. Coal was brought into the harbour from neighbouring collieries but in 1849 Seaham Colliery was opened (it was known locally as ‘the Knack’) by Londonderry. Disaster struck here on 25 October, 1871 when 26 miners were killed in an underground explosion and then on September 8, 1880 an even greater tragedy occurred, when again an explosion claimed lives, this time sending 164 men to their deaths along with 181 pit ponies.

Seaham colliery stood in the area to the west of Seaham railway station and a colliery village called New Seaham was built nearby (so that there were three Seahams) but New Seaham was later absorbed by the growth of the town of Seaham Harbour.

The coast at Seaham Harbour including Seaham lighthouse. Further extensions were made to the harbour at Seaham Harbour in 1905 by the Sixth Marquess of Londonderry and two further collieries were opened. The first, to the south, was Dawdon Colliery in 1907 and the second, to the north, was Vane Tempest Colliery (from the Londonderry family surname) which opened in 1926.

Even for east Durham these were relative late comers in County Durham’s mining history and the three deep pits of Seaham were also amongst the last to close. Seaham closed in 1988, Dawdon in 1991 and Vane Tempest in 1993. Vane Tempest closed a year before the last colliery in the Durham Coalfield closed which was of course the Monkwearmouth Colliery at Sunderland, now the site of the Sunderland Stadium of Light.

Seaham banner at the Durham Miners’ Gala. In and around the harbour, The colliery closures at Seaham and elsewhere hit East Durham very hard and the miners’ strike of 1984-1985 which preceded them was a particularly painful point in Seaham’s history.

In recent decades Seaham has seen a revival. Smart-looking eating establishments and other pleasing shops now look out upon the sea front above the pleasant little beach just north of the harbour.

'Tommy' by Ray Lonsdale.
Since 2014 the green above the beach has become the home to the famous, nearly 10 feet tall sculpture called ‘Tommy’, a photogenic figure made from corten steel by artist Ray Lonsdale commemorating the soldiers of the First World War. Nearby, from an earlier time are the smart looking former Londonderry Offices of the late 1850s with a bronze statue of the Marquess of Londonderry outside.

This is the sixth marquess, the one who extended the harbour in the early 1900s. If you want to see a statue of the third marquess, the man who actually built the town and harbour, then head for Durham City where you’ll find him sitting on his horse in full military regalia in the city’s market square. The harbour itself at Seaham consists of a north and south pier with the northern pier culminating in the pretty Seaham lighthouse. Enclosed within the harbour piers are further smaller piers or jetties; a marina (the North Dock); a larger southern dock (which was the part extended in the early 1900s) and there’s even a small beach. Close to the marina is a small lifeboat and heritage centre while overlooking the harbour is Seaham’s little shopping centre, named ‘Byron Place’ after that moody poet.

Blast Beach and Chemical Beach
Durham’s beautiful coast is only just being discovered by many people, even by those who live only a matter of miles from its shore. There is probably no other comparative length of coastline in England that has seen such a transformation in recent decades having suffered in times past from so much industrial blight and the dumping of industrial waste.

A major continuous clean-up operation called ‘Turning the Tide’ has brought the beauty of the coastline back to life for people to enjoy and for nature to once again thrive in a way that had not been seen for perhaps a century and a half. It is an important coastline too, designated a ‘Heritage Coast’ with a unique meeting of the sea and the magnesian limestone producing a landscape of both international and regional geological importance, that is also very significant for its wildlife.

Noses Point, Seaham.
The industrial waste-piled beaches and blighted cliffs of the Durham coast are now a thing of the past. Durham’s beaches stretch from Sunderland in the north to Hartlepool in the south and the entire length has seen a transformation. Along its whole length the Durham coast features the cream-coloured, magnesian limestone cliffs that are the unique meeting place for this particular rock and the sea.

The coast is also characterised by rocky cliffs of modest height, by limestone sea stacks, occasional caves and every few miles or so, the mouths of little wooded ravines called ‘denes’ where streams cut their way through the limestone before entering the sea at Ryhope, Seaham, Dawdon, Hawthorn, Castle Eden and Crimdon. These were formed by huge torrents of water caused by melting glaciers at the end of the distant Ice Age.

A little south of the harbour at Seaham in the Dawdon area of Seaham and under the care of the National Trust are Chemical Beach and Blast Beach. Chemical Beach is the one north of the headland called Nose’s Point and its neighbour beyond Noses Point to the south is called Blast Beach. Both beaches are great places for a stroll and to explore. As their names suggest they both have an industrial past that stretched back into the nineteenth century but are now very pleasing to explore.

Blast Beach, Seaham. Yet, only as recently as 1992 so alien was the landscape of Blast Beach that it featured in the opening sequence to the movie Alien 3. In times past before the onset of industry all or a part of Blast Beach was known as Frenchmen’s Cove and was possibly connected with smuggling in some way. Illicit brandy was often dropped off – particularly in the eighteenth century – at particular points around the English coast by French ships as part of the smuggling trade and it is possible that this was one such location.

At Nose’s Point once stood the Seaham Iron Works in the nineteenth century which included blast furnaces built in 1862. The slag from the furnaces often ended up on the nearby beaches and it was these furnaces that apparently gave their name to Blast Beach just to the south of Nose’s Point.

Blast Beach is a beautiful stony beach. Between 1907 and 1991 Dawdon Colliery operated in this area but the iron works had already ceased to be when the colliery opened. Dawdon colliery was located roughly where we now find Seaham’s Spectrum Business Park close to the sea. Coal mining waste or slag from Dawdon Colliery was dumped directly into the sea over Noses Point using a conveyor. Much waste from this and other industries was washed out and then back onto shore accumulating on the beach to a depth of several feet.

To the north of Nose’s Point where we now find the large white warehouses of the Seaham Harbour Dock Company and other industries was once located a nineteenth century chemical works and a bottle works nearer to the harbour to its north. The site of the chemical works explains the name of the nearby Chemical Beach. The works was established in the late 1860s but did not survive into the twentieth century.

Sea stack, Chemical Beach, Seaham. Just to their north the Seaham Glass Works were again roughly within the area occupied by the white warehouse buildings of today. The glass works was founded by John Candlish in 1853 and it later merged with the adjoining Londonderry Glassworks on its south side. The works was, until 1921, the largest glass bottle works in Britain. Seaham was an ideal location for such an industry with sand and coal in such plentiful supply.

Bottles were shipped to London and Europe from here and much glass waste of several differing colours was thrown into the sea and after decades enduring the constant weathering work of waves the glass waste is regularly washed ashore in jewel-like beads of different sizes and colours, some of which are used by local jewellery designers.