Seaham Harbour

Some photographs and some words...

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

In a letter to a friend, the ever-gloomy Lord Byron complains about his time at Seaham.

A week or so ago, I travelled a few miles south down the coast of northeast England to Seaham Harbour, a place with a wealth of memories. As a child, I often visited the town and nearby beaches with my parents, and later, I took my children there. One of my most vivid memories is of early morning visits with my father, watching the fishing boats dock and him buying the freshest of fish on the quayside. Sixty years later, the absence of these boats is a poignant reminder of the decline of the UK's fishing industry.

Seaham Harbour is a nineteenth-century town distinct from the nearby fishing village of Seaham, which dates from the Anglo-Saxon era and has all but now disappeared.

The name Seaham is derived from the Anglo-Saxon term for 'homestead by the sea', reflecting its roots. Confirmation of these comes from the church of St Mary, a remnant of the village, with a nave dating back to the seventh century. An excavation close to the church also offered finds of an Angle burial ground. The first written mention of Seaham was not until 933 CE when it came under the control of the Community of St Cuthbert only two years before they moved to Durham (see more on Cuthbert in my piece Luxmuralis).

Before the Angles came the Romans, who are believed to have had a signal station in the area. One of a series along the Durham coast. The finding of Roman coins in the vicinity also supports the view of Roman occupation.

Like much of the Durham coast's length, the cliffs at Seaham Harbour are of cream-coloured magnesian limestone. The cliffs are of modest height and with occasional caves. Also, at Seaham and every few miles along the coastline are the mouths of little wooded ravines called 'denes' where streams cut their way through the limestone before entering the sea. Vast torrents of water caused by melting glaciers at the end of the Ice Age formed these denes.

I and many who visit find that coastline wonderful at any time of year, but not every visitor feels that way. As you can see from the quotation at the start of this piece, Lord Byron is one of them. In 1815, he was one of the biggest celebrities of the era. He married at Seaham while living at Seaham Hall (now a luxury spa hotel) with his bride, Lady Ann Isabella Milbanke, whose father was the owner. The marriage was unhappy, and Byron later ridiculed his unfortunate bride in one of his poems by calling her 'Lady Millpond'.

Shipwrecks involving colliers may have been a common feature of the Northeast coast in Byron's day. Still, Seaham itself was then a bystander to the expanding northeast England coal trade. There was then no exploitation of the coal that lay deep underground in the eastern part of County Durham. In fact, at that time, many doubted whether there was any such coal.

That thinking was soon to change with the opening of the first deep mine a few miles from Seaham at a town called Hetton in 1821, and a 'coal rush' soon followed that brought mines and industry that rapidly expanded what had been small towns and villages. This 'coal rush' not only transformed the landscape and economy of Seaham Harbour but also led to significant social and cultural changes. Spurring all this on was the coming of the railway and the newly developed locomotives that helped the rapid and efficient movement of the 'black gold'.

Coal soon became a big business, making the already wealthy landowners even more wealthy. Here, I introduce the 3rd Marquis of Londonderry.

The Marquis, or Charles William Stewart as he was before he became such, was a soldier. Born into the wealthy Stewart family in Dublin, Charles joined the British army at twelve years old, becoming a major at seventeen. Noted for his skill as a cavalryman leading a Hussar brigade, he eventually became Lieutenant-General, playing a key role in the Napoleonic wars with Wellington's campaigns in Spain, Portugal, and France. It was in 1819, after the death of his half-brother Robert, that Charles inherited the title 3rd Marquis of Londonderry and took charge of the family's vast estates in Ireland.

The Marquis had no links to County Durham until he married Frances Anne Vane Tempest in 1819. Anne was an heir to County Durham and Ireland estates that fell under the Marquis' control after Anne’s father's death. After retiring from the military, the Marquis became interested in developing County Durham's coal industry, investing heavily in mines and railways, especially in the eastern parts of the county.

However, there was a need to transport the coal his mines produced to the coast for loading onto colliers for transport to the lucrative London market. He first tried to do this by negotiating with the Commissioners of the River Wear at nearby Sunderland to obtain exclusive rights to the river for exporting coal from there. When the Commissioners refused him, the Marquis, being a man of short temper and used to getting his way, is alleged to have flown into a rage, deciding to develop a port of his own to compete with Sunderland, angrily claiming that when his new town was built, he would "see grass grow in the streets of Sunderland".

By 1831, this new industrial town, Seaham Harbour, was complete, and the shipping of coal from it began. That first collier brig was 'The Lord Seaham', named for the Marquis himself. Although his development proved profitable, in reality, and against his hopes, it did little to dent Sunderland's prosperity.

Despite his investment in Durham's coal industry, that early reputation for pomposity and privilege and his approach to labour relations means the Marquis is still a controversial and generally unpopular figure in northeast England.

A committed Tory who served as an MP, the Marquis opposed legislation that would have humanised work practices in the nation's collieries. He was against trade unions and broke strikes in his mines by bringing in Cornish tin miners. During the strikes, he sent letters to Seaham Harbour's merchants, threatening to evict anyone who supplied striking miners with goods. He refused inspection of his collieries and – as many boys laboured in his mines – opposed attempts to increase the school-leaving age to twelve. His unpopularity with local miners, therefore, comes as no surprise.

Although of Irish heritage, the Marquis was also criticised for how he responded to the Irish Potato Famine. Though one of Britain's wealthiest men, with extensive landholdings in Ireland, he gave only £30 (around £300 today) towards famine relief while spending £150,000 (around £15 million today) on renovating his Irish mansion. By the time of Marquis' death in 1854, his estates were bringing in annual profits equivalent to £7.5 million today, three-quarters of that from coal mining. But even after his death came controversy.

Despite her wealth, the Marquis’ widow Anne set up a subscription committee to raise money from friends for a statue of her deceased husband. She soon raised £2,000, a substantial amount of money then. Given the amount collected, the plans for the statue became grander when Anne decided to seat the Marquis, in the uniform of a Hussar, on a horse and make both man and horse double life-sized. The placement of the monument, a creation by one of the nation's then most talented sculptors, Raphael Monti, an English-based Italian sculptor from Milan, was to be in the centre of Durham City's marketplace.

Monti used a new, highly innovative technique that involved placing an electroplated copper covering over a plaster base. Monti's magnificent sculpture, however, soon caused problems. First, he went bankrupt just before the delivery of the statue, and his creditors confiscated it. Anne had to pay another £1,000 to have the sculpture released. Next, Durham City Council became alarmed at the double life-sized monument, feeling that the statue would be oversized for the small marketplace. They tried to persuade Durham University to erect it on Palace Green outside of Durham Cathedral, but the university refused. So, the council had no alternative but to allow the artwork, which is still the largest produced using the electroplating method, into the marketplace. However, opposition to the plan then came from five local tradespeople who launched a lawsuit, claiming that the enormous monument would restrict movement in the market and affect their businesses. Their suit failed, however, and the unveiling of the statue took place on 2 December 1861. Among those in attendance was the future British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli.

Late 1860s photograph of the statue of the 3rd Marquis of Londonderry.

When I was young, my father told me of a folk tale about the statue that goes along these lines. Raphael Monti was so proud of his sculpture that he challenged all present to try to find fault with it, promising to reward anyone who could find the tiniest mistake. Many took on the challenge, but all had to admit that the artwork was perfect. Then, a blind man asked if he might inspect the piece. After feeling around the statue with his hands, the blind man declared there was indeed a fault – the horse had no tongue. At this news, Monti was so devastated he supposedly committed suicide.

It's a great tale and a complete fabrication. The horse has a tongue, and Monti did not commit suicide, living for another twenty years after the statue's unveiling.

Despite the controversy surrounding the statue of the Marquis, and indeed the man himself, it is still in Durham Market Place today. It was moved only once, in 2009, for renovation. Then, it was relocated fifty feet (sixteen metres) from its original central position and turned around to make the marketplace more suitable for shopping, holding events, and performing.

The influence of the Londonderry family began to wane with the removal of coal mines from private hands by nationalisation. And then came the decline of the coal industry. That, along with the decline of fishing I mentioned earlier, meant Seaham Harbour shifted from an industrial town to one based on tourism, leisure, and heritage conservation. The Marina and Seafront redevelopment turned the old industrial docks into a vibrant area with cafes, restaurants, and leisure activities such as the heritage coastline walk and beaches.

Mentioning beaches, a little south of Seaham Harbour, under the care of the National Trust, are the unattractively named Chemical Beach and Blast Beach. Despite those names dating back to their 19th-century industrial past, both are lovely places to stroll and explore. Blast Beach's claim to fame is that it featured in the film 'Alien 3' opening sequence.

Seaham also has its statues, but people regard those more fondly than the one in Durham of the Marquis.

'Coxswain’, a statue by local artist and steel fabricator Ray Lonsdale, is a tribute to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and specifically the nine lives lost from the lifeboat 'The George Elmy' in a 1962 disaster.

The lifeboat, stationed at Seaham, was called out on the night of 17 November to rescue five fishermen from a small vessel, 'The Economy,’ caught in a storm.

After successfully saving the fishermen, the crew of the George Elmy tried to return to shore. But a massive wave struck the lifeboat just thirty yards (ten metres) from safety. The lifeboat capsized, and tragically, all five fishermen and four of the volunteer lifeboat crew lost their lives. Only one crew member survived the disaster by clinging to the lifeboat as the sea swept it towards shore. Despite its swamping, the lifeboat was not severely damaged. However, never used for rescue again, it is now on display at Seaham Harbour Marina as a tribute to the lost crew.

Although the town has changed much since my first visits over sixty years ago, I still much enjoy my visits to Seaham Harbour, especially the annual food festival on the seafront around another of the town's statues, 'Eleven-O-One'. Again a Ray Lonsdale commission, which was erected in 2018 to commemorate the First World War centenary. The statue’s name refers to the first minute of peace after the 1918 armistice.

A soldier sits thoughtfully with head bowed, down-cast eyes and rifle in hand as he reflects upon the sheer horror of the Great War. As with that of the Marquess, the statue is massive, standing at 9ft 5ins tall (circa 3 metres) and weighing 1.2 tonnes and yet while that of the Marquis is usually referred to dismissively by those of northeast England as 'the man on the hoss', the more poignant statue on Seaham's seafront is known affectionately by all in the region as 'Tommy".