Introduction

Welcome to East Durham History site we hope that you will enjoy looking through the extensive Photographic archive of some of the oldest and mostly original records of seaham and surrounding towns and villages.

St mary’s 7 century anglo saxon church

There are some photographs and articles already available and more to come asap.

St Mary’s Saxon Church. Photographed by Keith Duffy

The original village of Seaham has all but vanished; it lay between St Mary’s Church and seaham hall (i.e. somewhat to the north of the current town centre). The parish church, St Mary the Virgin, has a late 7th century Anglo saxon naive resembling the church 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, was married at Seaham Hall to Lord Byron, on 2 January 1815.^[5] 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:

This site is primarily based around Seahams early settlement and shows developments through the decades

Aslo incorporating many of the surrounding towns and villages

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