![Seaham Lifeboat Memorial (2748044724)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Seaham_Lifeboat_Memorial_%282748044724%29.jpg)
Seaham is a seaside town in
County Durham,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. Located on the
Durham Coast
The Durham Coast is a Site of Special Scientific Interest in County Durham, England. Starting just south of Crimdon Dene, north of Hartlepool, it extends, with a few interruptions, northward to the mouth of the River Tyne at South Shields. Not ...
, Seaham is situated south of
Sunderland and east of
Durham Durham most commonly refers to:
*Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham
*County Durham, an English county
* Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States
*Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...
. The town grew from the late 19th century onwards as a result of investments in its harbour and coal mines. The town is twinned with the German town of
Gerlingen
Gerlingen (Swabian: ''Gaerlenge'') is a town in the district of Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 9 km west of Stuttgart, and 15 km southwest of Ludwigsburg. Gerlingen is home to Bosch, a major engineering and ...
.
History
The original village of Seaham has all but vanished; it lay between St Mary's Church and
Seaham Hall
Seaham Hall is an English country house, now run as a spa hotel, in County Durham.
History
Seaham Hall was built in the 1790s by Sir Ralph Milbanke, 6th Baronet. In 1815 the poet Lord Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke at Seaham Hall. The fr ...
(i.e. somewhat to the north of the current town centre). The parish church, St Mary the Virgin, has a late 7th century. The Anglian
nave
The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...
resembling the
church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship
* C ...
at
Escomb in many respects,
and is one of the 20 oldest surviving churches in the UK.
Until the early years of the 19th century, Seaham was a small rural agricultural farming community whose only claim to fame was that the local landowner's daughter,
Anne Isabella Milbanke
Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron (''née'' Milbanke; 17 May 1792 – 16 May 1860), nicknamed Annabella and commonly known as Lady Byron, was wife of poet George Gordon Byron, more commonly known as Lord Byro ...
, was married at Seaham Hall to
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...
, on 2 January 1815.
Byron began writing his ''Hebrew Melodies'' at Seaham and they were published in April 1815.
It would seem that Byron was bored in wintry Seaham, though the sea enthralled him.
As he wrote in a letter to a friend:
The marriage was short-lived, producing as its only child the
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
Ada Lovelace, but it was long enough to have been a drain on the Milbanke estate. The area's fortunes changed when the Milbankes sold out in 1821 to the
3rd Marquess of Londonderry, who built a harbour, in 1828, to facilitate transport of goods from locally encouraged industries (the first coal mine was begun in 1845). However, this harbour later proved inadequate to deal with the millions of tonnes of coal and the
6th Marquess commissioned engineers
Patrick Meik and
Charles Meik to reclaim land and extend and deepen the dock. It was officially opened in 1905. The harbour is of particular interest because it consists of a series of interconnecting locks, rather than the more typical two wall construction.
As early as 1823, the 3rd Marquess had approached the architect
John Dobson with a view to his drawing up plans for a town to be built around the harbour. Dobson did so, but the planned approach foundered for lack of funds, and the town instead grew in a more piecemeal fashion.
To begin with, the town was itself called Seaham Harbour (to differentiate it from the ancient village); in time, though, the settlement as a whole came to be known as Seaham.
In 1853 John Candlish built the Londonderry Bottleworks in the town. It was the largest glass bottle works in Britain and survived until 1921. Candlish went on to become mayor and, in 1868, Liberal MP for
Sunderland. Waste glass from the bottleworks was dumped at sea and is now washed up as glass pebbles, known as
sea glass
Sea glass and beach glass are naturally weathered pieces of glass, which often have the appearance of tumbled stones. "Sea glass" is physically and chemically weathered glass found on beaches along bodies of salt water. These weathering proc ...
, on local beaches.
In 1928, production started at the last town colliery to be opened, Vane Tempest. By 1992, however, all three pits (
Dawdon Colliery, Vane Tempest Colliery and
Seaham Colliery
The Seaham Colliery was a coal mine in County Durham in the North of England. The mine suffered an underground explosion in 1880 which resulted in the deaths of upwards of 160 people, including surface workers and rescuers.
Among the dead were ...
– known locally as "the Knack") had closed, a process accelerated by the
British miners' strike. The pit closures hit the local economy extremely hard.
Seaham Colliery suffered an underground explosion in 1880 which resulted in the loss of over 160 lives, including surface workers and rescuers.
Many local families were affected by the tragic loss of eight men and one boy in the 'Seaham Lifeboat Disaster', when the
RNLI lifeboat
Lifeboat may refer to:
Rescue vessels
* Lifeboat (shipboard), a small craft aboard a ship to allow for emergency escape
* Lifeboat (rescue), a boat designed for sea rescues
* Airborne lifeboat, an air-dropped boat used to save downed airmen
...
, the ''George Elmy'', foundered on 17 November 1962. To commemorate the event, the new coast road was named George Elmy Lifeboat Way.
Governance and politics
An
electoral ward with the same name exists. The population of this ward taken at the 2011 census was 8419.
Seaham is part of the
Easington parliament constituency and is currently represented in the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...
by
Labour Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
,
Grahame Morris, who has served since the
2010 general election.
Today
![Church Street, Seaham - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Church_Street%2C_Seaham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1529671.jpg)
Seaham has fine beaches and transport links to the eastern coast. From 2001 most of the Durham coastline was designated as a "heritage coast" and Seaham beach was entirely restored.
In 2002 the Turning the Tide project won, jointly with the
Eden Project
The Eden Project ( kw, Edenva) is a visitor attraction in Cornwall, England, UK. The project is located in a reclaimed china clay pit, located from the town of St Blazey and from the larger town of St Austell.Ordnance Survey (2005). ''OS ...
, the prize for Outstanding Achievement in Regeneration in the annual
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is a global professional body for surveyors, founded in London in 1868. It works at a cross-governmental level, and aims to promote and enforce the highest international standards in the va ...
awards.
Seaham Hall
Seaham Hall is an English country house, now run as a spa hotel, in County Durham.
History
Seaham Hall was built in the 1790s by Sir Ralph Milbanke, 6th Baronet. In 1815 the poet Lord Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke at Seaham Hall. The fr ...
is now a luxury hotel and
spa.
The "Byron Place" shopping centre (named from Seaham's association with
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...
) opened in 2007 and includes
Asda
Asda Stores Ltd. () (often styled as ASDA) is a British supermarket chain. It is headquartered in Leeds, England. The company was founded in 1949 when the Asquith family merged their retail business with the Associated Dairies company of Yorks ...
and
Wilko stores.
In 2006, a survey conducted by
Halifax revealed that Seaham was, at the time, the top property price increase hotspot in England and Wales as average prices had risen by 172% since 2003 although the average price remained well below the national average. It is believed this surge had been greatly helped by regeneration work in the area, and in particular the new housing estate East Shore Village.
Today, the town has a population of around 22,000, and is served by
Seaham railway station, which lies on the
Durham Coast Line
The Durham Coast Line is an approximately railway line running between Newcastle and in North East England. Heavy rail passenger services, predominantly operated Northern Trains, and some freight services operate over the whole length of the li ...
, running from
Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area.
Until the early 1800s, the a ...
to
Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to:
*Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England
*Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England
*Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...
, via
Hartlepool,
Stockton and
Sunderland. Local bus services operated by
Arriva North East and
Go North East
Go North East operates both local and regional bus services in County Durham, Cumbria, Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Tyne and Wear, England. It was previously known as the Northern General Transport Company and Go-Ahead Northern. The comp ...
also provide access to the nearby towns of
Murton,
Peterlee
Peterlee is a town in County Durham, England. It lies between Sunderland to the north, Hartlepool to the south, the Durham Coast to the east and Durham to the west. It gained town status in 1948 under the New Towns Act 1946. The act also cre ...
and
Houghton-le-Spring, as well as further afield to
Sunderland,
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...
,
Durham Durham most commonly refers to:
*Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham
*County Durham, an English county
* Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States
*Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...
,
Darlington,
Stockton-on-Tees and
Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area.
Until the early 1800s, the a ...
.
Seaham has one secondary school, without a sixth-form, called
Seaham High School, before 2016 known as Seaham School of Technology.
In October 2021 hundreds of dead crabs were washed-up on the beach at Seaton Carew. Similar
mass die-offs of shellfish occurred along other stretches of the northeast coast.
Sport
Seaham's main football team is
Seaham Red Star F.C., formerly Seaham Colliery Welfare Red Star, located near Seaham's Red Star park. The club plays in
Northern League Division One.
Seaham has two cricket clubs, Seaham Harbour Cricket club, and Seaham Park Cricket Club. Both senior teams play in the Durham & Northeast Cricket League.
In the 2019-20 rugby season, Seaham RUFC were promoted from
Durham/Northumberland 3
Counties 3 Durham & Northumberland, previously known as Durham/Northumberland 3, is an English rugby union league at the ninth tier of the domestic competition and is currently the basement league of club rugby in North East England. Any club ...
into
Durham/Northumberland 2
Counties 2 Durham & Northumberland, formerly known as Durham/Northumberland 2, is an English rugby union league at the eighth tier of the domestic competition for teams from North East England. The champions and runner-up are promoted to Coun ...
.
Media coverage
The final scene of the 1971 film, ''
Get Carter
''Get Carter'' is a 1971 British crime film
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detecti ...
'', was shot at Blackhall Rocks beach, Seaham.
The rich mining history of the town was highlighted in the 2000 film ''
Billy Elliot
''Billy Elliot'' is a 2000 British coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Daldry and written by Lee Hall. Set in County Durham in North East England during the 1984–1985 miners' strike, the film is about a working-class boy w ...
'', which was set during the
1984–85 UK miners' strike in the fictional County Durham town of Everington but which displayed characteristics particular to East Durham pit communities such as Seaham and
Easington Colliery
Easington Colliery is a town in County Durham, England, known for a history of coal mining. It is situated to the north of Horden, a short distance to the east of Easington Village. The town suffered a significant mining accident on 29 May ...
.
Both towns feature as locations in the film, notably
Dawdon
Dawdon is a former pit community to the south of Seaham, County Durham, England. An area of the beach near Dawdon (known locally as "the Blast", a former waste coal dumping site) was used in the opening scenes of the science fiction film Alien ...
Miners' Club, into which Elliot's dad runs when he learns his son has won an audition at dance school.
Elliot's "angry dance" scene takes place in Dawdon between Embleton Street and Stavordale Street West.
The opening scene in ''
Alien 3
''Alien 3'' (stylized as ''A''LIEN³) is a 1992 American science fiction horror film directed by David Fincher and written by David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson, from a story by Vincent Ward. It stars Sigourney Weaver, reprising her ...
'' (1992) was filmed on Blast Beach, at
Dawdon
Dawdon is a former pit community to the south of Seaham, County Durham, England. An area of the beach near Dawdon (known locally as "the Blast", a former waste coal dumping site) was used in the opening scenes of the science fiction film Alien ...
.
The town has also served as a location for the
BAFTA nominated film ''Life For Ruth'' (1962) starring
Janet Munro
Janet Munro (born Janet Neilson Horsburgh; 28 September 1934 – 6 December 1972) was a British actress. She won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the film ''Darby O'Gill and the Little People'' (1959) and received a BAFTA Film Awar ...
and
Patrick McGoohan.
The town appeared in the
BBC Three
BBC Three is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was first launched on 9 February 2003 with programmes targeting 16 to 34-year-olds, covering all genres including animation, comedy, cur ...
sitcom ''
Live!Girls! present Dogtown'' which premiered on the channel in autumn 2006. According to the ''
Sunderland Echo
The ''Sunderland Echo'' is a daily newspaper serving the Sunderland, South Tyneside and East Durham areas of North East England. The newspaper was founded by Samuel Storey, Edward Backhouse, Edward Temperley Gourley, Charles Palmer, Richar ...
'' (11 February 1999), scenes from ''
Saving Private Ryan
''Saving Private Ryan'' is a 1998 American epic war film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat. Set during the Battle of Normandy in World War II, the film is known for its graphic portrayal of war, especially its depicti ...
'' (1998) were also going to be filmed in Seaham, but government intervention moved production elsewhere.
According to Tom McNee's 1992 portrait of the town ''The Changing Face of Seaham: 1928–1992'',
St. John's parish church was used as the setting of a 1985 service recorded for
BBC Radio 3. Also, a two-part
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
documentary profiled the town in 1991.
Landmarks
To the south, beside the road to Dalton-le-Dale, are the remains of Dalden Tower, comprising the ruins of a 16th-century tower and fragments of later buildings.
The harbour itself may be said to be the principal landmark of the nineteenth-century town; though the Londonderry Institute in Tempest Road (1853-5 by
Thomas Oliver) with its monumental Greek-style
portico provides something of a glimpse of the Marquess's original vision for the town.
Of a slightly later date, the former Londonderry Offices on the sea front once served as headquarters for the mining and other businesses of the Londonderry family.
A statue of the 6th Marquess stands in the forecourt.
Also dating from an early stage in the town's development is the town-centre church of St John, Seaham Harbour (1835–40).
For the very much older St Mary's, Seaham, and its neighbour Seaham Hall, see above.
For just over a hundred years the harbour was towered over by a lighthouse on Red Acre Point, immediately to the north, designed by
William Chapman. Erected in 1835, it displayed a fixed white light above a revolving red light (an unusual configuration, provided so as to distinguish it from the north pier light at Sunderland);
both lights were displayed from the same tower, the upper being and the lower above mean sea level.
The lighthouse was gas-lit, with an arrangement of
third-order catadioptric
A catadioptric optical system is one where refraction and reflection are combined in an optical system, usually via lenses (dioptrics) and curved mirrors ( catoptrics). Catadioptric combinations are used in focusing systems such as searchlights, ...
lenses provided by
Chance Brothers & Co. It was decommissioned in 1905, when the harbour was expanded and the current black-and-white striped pier-head light was constructed. Red Acre lighthouse was left standing, however, to serve as a
daymark
A daymark is a navigational aid for sailors and pilots, distinctively marked to maximize its visibility in daylight.
The word is also used in a more specific, technical sense to refer to a signboard or daytime identifier that is attached to ...
, until 1940 when the whole structure was swiftly demolished in case it should serve to assist enemy navigators.
A steel statue, ''1101'' (locally also known as ''
Tommy
Tommy may refer to:
People
* Tommy (given name)
* Tommy Atkins, or just Tommy, a slang term for a common soldier in the British Army
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Tommy'' (1931 film), a Soviet drama film
* ''Tommy'' (1975 fil ...
'') by local artist
Ray Lonsdale, commemorating World War One and initially erected temporarily for three months, was the subject of a local fund-raising drive in 2014 to retain it on the town's seafront.
Notable people
Between 1929 and 1935, the Member of Parliament (MP) for
Seaham
Seaham is a seaside town in County Durham, England. Located on the Durham Coast, Seaham is situated south of Sunderland and east of Durham. The town grew from the late 19th century onwards as a result of investments in its harbour and ...
(the defunct constituency which covered the area now renamed Easington) was Labour Prime Minister
Ramsay MacDonald.
Easington constituency has only ever returned
Labour candidates to Parliament,
and at the
2010 General Election, Labour candidate
Grahame Morris was elected with a majority of 14,982 votes.
Seaham has also produced several able footballers, some of whom have gone on to play for the local team,
Sunderland, such as
Richie Pitt and
Gary Rowell.
Terry Fenwick
Terence William Fenwick (born 17 November 1959) is an English football manager and former player who played either as a centre-back or a full-back.
During his playing career, he made a total of 455 appearances in the Football League for Cryst ...
and
Brian Marwood played for England, with the latter, on retirement from football, working as a commentator for
Sky Sports
Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...
.
Paul Gascoigne also lived in Seaham in the late 1990s, while playing for
Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area.
Until the early 1800s, the a ...
.
Other notable residents include:
*
Baritone Sir
Thomas Allen was born in Seaham in 1944
*
Martin Brammer, musician
*
Bob Fox, musician
*
Elizabeth Sterling Haynes (born in Seaham in 1897), Canadian theatre activist
*
Janie Jones, singer
*
William McNally, Victoria Cross winner
*
Ian Pattison
Ian Pattison is a Scottish writer who lives in Glasgow, best known for writing the 10 series of the sitcom ''Rab C Nesbitt''. He also wrote the 1995 to 1996 sitcom ''Atletico Partick''; the six-episode series ''Breeze Block'' starring Tim Hea ...
, cricketer
*
Agony aunt and author
Denise Robertson
Denise Robertson (9 June 1932 – 31 March 2016) was a British writer and television broadcaster. She made her television debut as the presenter of the ''Junior Advice Line'' segment of the BBC's '' Breakfast Time'' programme in 1985, though ...
lived in the town for many years
*
Alex Russell, former professional footballer
*
Peter Willey
Peter Willey (born 6 December 1949) is a former English cricketer, who played as a right-handed batsman and right-arm offbreak bowler. In and out of the England team, he interrupted his international career for three years by taking part in the ...
, Northamptonshire and England cricketer, went to Seaham Secondary School
Freedom of the Town
The following people and military units have received the
Freedom of the Town of Seaham.
Military Units
* The
4th Regiment Royal Artillery
The 4th Regiment Royal Artillery is a regiment of the Royal Artillery in the British Army. It was formed in 1939 as 4th Regiment Royal Horse Artillery before being redesignated in 1961. It is currently based at Alanbrooke Barracks in Topcliff ...
: 23 July 2022.
References
External links
Seaham Marina Independent Information WebsiteThe history of Seaham and surrounding towns and villages, Great picture archiveBBC Wear – Seaham stories and picturesSeaham councilSeaham history projectA brief history of SeahamChildren in the MinesSeaham collierySeaham Colliery DisasterFlickr Group, Images of SeahamHistory of Seaham HallSeaham Harbour Online* Tide times for Seaham fro
BBCEasytide an
Tide TimesThe George Elmy Disasterhttp://www.dawdoncollieryremembered.uk/
{{Authority control
Towns in County Durham
Populated coastal places in County Durham
Civil parishes in County Durham