The building at top left is St Mary's vicarage, this was built around 1830 on the site of a former vicarage though much enlarged.
To the right of the vicarage is the 7th century St Mary's Church which was possibly built on the site of an earlier wooden church.
At the centre is Seaham Hall during conversion to a hotel, in 1792 the Milbanke's demolished their Seaham Cottage on this site and built a grand hall. The square section left of centre is I believe their original hall which was much enlarged by the Londonderry's shortly after they acquired the estate in 1821. During the course of the extensions they swept away the village inn and the various cottages surrounding the green. At the same time they moved the Home Farm from it's original location to the south of the Hall to it's present location at bottom right of photograph.
Photograph 1999/2000
Copyright FlyingFotos www.seahamfromtheair.co.uk
Seaham Hall around 1900. The great English poet Lord Byron arrived in 1814 to woo and win the Milbanke’s talented daughter, Anne Isabella. The villagers disliked the morose and moody Byron, too much given to silent walks along the beach to the Featherbed Rock, or westward along the village road later called “Byron's Walk”. The doomed marriage took place not in the Church, but in the upstairs drawing room of Seaham Hall on 2nd February, 1815. Within a year the couple had parted.
Seaham Hall c 1900. In 1821 the Milbankes sold the twin Estates of Dalden and Seaham to Charles Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry and his coal heiress wife, Frances Anne Vane Tempest. Soon they were to found and develop Seaham Harbour. But in the next thirty years the Londonderrys would demolish the old village, add two wings to the Hall, extend and enclose the grounds and have their own private station. From 1837 onwards, royalty, the rich and the humble were all entertained there.
Seaham Hall in 1859 / 60.
In 1776 Sir Ralph and Lady Judith Milbanke left Dalden Hall to live in the Old Seaham Manor house, known as “The Cottage”, which they demolished and rebuilt in 1792.
The new house forms the central part of the present hall, it was fronted by the village green, Home Farm and Pack Horse Bridge across the dene. Adjoining the Hall to the east was the village inn, roses clustering around its lattices. A few cottages, the vicarage and Glebe Farm straggled down past the Church.
