The Blast Beach south of Dawdon, looking north to the blast furnaces, Watson Town and Seaham Chemical Works ( site of the later Dawdon Colliery ). Photograph between 1870 and 1890.
A little over a century later this beach was used for the opening sequences of the film ALIEN, selected by the producers as the best representation of a hostile alien environment on a dead planet. The result of a hundred years of mining polution.
