The hamlet of Seaton was first
mentioned in documents in AD 950. It was considered part of the manor of
Seaham until the division of 1295 when half of each village was allotted
to the families of Hadham and Yeland. As the centuries passed ownerships
changed hands several times. One line eventually led to the Collingwoods,
Milbankes and Londonderrys and the other ended up with different owners,
such as Colonel Lancelot Gregson. Thus much of Seaton was never owned by
the Londonderry family unlike most of the rest of Greater Seaham. The
village has never had its own church or even a chapel and has always been
in the parish of St. Mary the Virgin at (Old) Seaham.
Centuries of rural tranquility came to an
abrupt end in 1828 when the 3rd. Marquess of Londonderry built a waggonway
to connect his wife’s Rainton and Penshaw pits to their new port and town
of Seaham Harbour, the Rainton & Seaham Railway. This skirted the southern
end of Seaton and brought in newcomers to operate the line. No sooner was
it completed in 1831 than the Sunderland Dock Company pushed through a
passenger and freight line in the direction of Durham, with a branch line
to the new pit at South Hetton and the projected new colliery at Haswell.
This passed just west of Seaton which was given its own station. Completed
by 1836 the Sunderland to Durham (Shincliffe) and Haswell Railway passed
under the Rainton and Seaham at Seaton Bank Top, and a junction was
effected to enable Rainton coals to divert to Sunderland if Seaham Harbour
was overloaded. The directors of the new line were unconvinced by the
early locomotives produced by George Stephenson and others and instead
opted for fixed engines which could manage steep gradients far better.
Later locomotives had the power to cope effortlessly with the gradients
but by then it was too late and the company was stuck with the archaic
method of transport until it was taken over by the giant North Eastern
Railway in 1854.
The advantage of fixed engines was that they
overcame the necessity for much of the excavation work required to make a
railway line as level as possible. Consequently, for reasons of economy,
the Sunderland to Durham (Shincliffe) & Haswell ended up with some of the
steepest gradients in the British railway network and was later used to
test the power and brakes on new models of locomotives. From Ryhope to
Haswell via Seaton, Murton Junction and South Hetton was a continuous
upslope. One night in the 1890s the brakes on a downtrack loco failed at
Murton and the runaway train raced past Seaton before derailing itself on
the curve ahead. Several people were killed.
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The disadvantage to fixed engines was that
they made a journey tortuous in the extreme due to the need to change
haulage equipment for each leg of a journey. From Sunderland to Ryhope,
which was flat, the trains were hauled by a primitive locomotive. There
the loco was replaced by a chain connected to the fixed engine house at
Murton Junction. The coaches were than pulled uphill, stopping at Seaton
on the way. At Murton the chain was changed for another one connected to
Haswell fixed engine house. To get to Durham was even more complicated. It
was necessary to change trains at Murton Junction and gravity brought the
coaches (still connected by a chain) downhill to Hetton. From there to
Durham (Shincliffe) via Pittington, Broomside and Sherburn House was
comparatively flat but there were several more fixed engines to attatch to
en route. It was barely quicker than walking but this method of transport
was used some 20 years after the development of powerful locos which could
do the entire journey on their own regardless of the gradients.
From 1836 onwards therefore, a very early
date in railway history, Seaton was directly connected to the outside
world. Sunderland was now just 15 minutes away and London could be reached
within a day. Seaham Harbour would not have a passenger railway for
another 20 years so Seaton, being the nearest station, catered for Seaham
Harbour traffic as well during that period. The Londonderry Seaham &
Sunderland Railway opened in 1855. Seaton station at once lost all of the
Seaham Harbour traffic and became a quiet backwater of the NER system. Its
busiest day of the year after 1871 was always the Durham Miners Gala when
tens of thousands of East Durham mining folk would travel on the line to
the county town. Seaham miners and their bands would march in procession
to Seaton station to board the special trains provided. Though hundreds of
thousands of people must have used Seaton station in its heyday no photos
of it are known to have survived.
In 1844 the North Hetton & Grange Coal
Company commenced the sinking of Seaton Colliery on land leased from Lord
Londonderry. The new concern was called Seaton Colliery after the nearest
settlement but the village of Seaton was a good mile away. The presence of
rich but very deep coal was proven by 1849. Londonderry then began his own
Seaham Colliery alongside. Seaton Colliery started production in 1852
after a long and costly battle. Seaham began production not long after but
the precise date is not known. A new community appeared, called New
Seaham, which became a separate parish from (Old) Seaham in 1864. For 13
years the villagers of Old Seaham and Seaton had to share St. Mary the
Virgin with swarms of rough mining folk. This came to an end when New
Seaham Christ Church was begun by the Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry
in 1857. In 1864 Seaton and Seaham collieries united as Lord Londonderry’s
Seaham Colliery. In 1871 the first major Seaham Colliery disaster killed
26. In 1880 the second Seaham Colliery disaster killed 164 men and boys.
Two of these, the teenage brothers Knox, were Seaton residents and were
buried at St. Mary the Virgin.
In November 1896 the last Londonderry pits
at Rainton closed. The Rainton & Seaham Railway was dismantled between
Rainton and Seaham Colliery. Parts of the trackbed and an embankment can
still be observed near Seaton Bank Top and at Warden Law. Seaton thus lost
its only heavy industry and the connection to mining villages inland.
Thereafter it reverted to a quiet agricultural village.
In the 1950s passenger services ended on the
old Sunderland to Durham (via Murton) & Hartlepool (via Haswell) line. The
track stayed in place between South Hetton (and the projected Hawthorn
Shaft which would raise coal from Eppleton, Elemore and Murton collieries)
and the coast railway at Ryhope. Thus coal could still be transported from
the few surviving East Durham collieries to Sunderland for export. In 1991
Murton and Hawthorn Shaft were closed and the last section of line was
dismantled. One unlucky driver, travelling on the Seaham to Houghton road,
was dazzled by the morning sunshine and failed to see the warning lights
flashing at the railway crossing. He was killed by one of the last trains
to pass through, whose job was to take up the railway behind it. The
entire trackbed of this beautiful old railway from Ryhope (A19 Flyover) to
Hart Station (some 11 miles) has now been turned into a continuous
walkway.
In the 1970s Seaton was physically severed
from the rest of Greater Seaham by a cutting of the new A19 Sunderland
bypass. Despite the new bridge across the cutting this frontier has served
only to further identify Seaton as a separate place with a separate
history. It is now a very comfortable and prosperous semi-rural village
and the nearest coal mine is over a hundred miles away. One of its
residents is David Angus, butcher and cacti collector, co-author of two
books about Seaham with the late Tom MacNee. The village has two ancient
pubs, the Dun Cow and the Roadside Inn (Seaton Lane Inn) but no shop.
TOP
Population changes in the 19th. Century were:
The
ancient parish of St. Andrew included the four constabularies or townships
of Dalton-le-Dale, Morton-in-the-Whins, Cold Hesledon, Dalden (or Dawdon)
and several outlying farms. The largest of these communities and the
parish seat was Dalton-le-Dale, described in c. AD 700 by the Venerable
Bede as a cluster of ‘ten households round the Guildhall of Witmar, Saxon
thegn and Soldier of Christ’. In 1155 the boundaries between the
possessions of the Church of Dalden and those of the Lords of Dalden were
decided by arbitration.
St. Andrew’s at Dalton-le-Dale has been
tentatively dated at c.1150, but this was in the turbulent reign of King
Stephen, 84 years after the Conquest, when a civil war over the throne was
in progress and the Scots had taken the opportunity of English disunity to
seize most of the north of England, including County Durham. An earlier or
later date, when normality prevailed, seems more likely. The doorway is
definitely Norman in style. The church contains a unique internal sundial
and also the ancestral tombs of some of the Lords of Dalden. The ruins of
their ancient stronghold, Dalden Tower, still stand in the dene. Nearby
was their home at Dalden Hall. Dalden Tower was needed when Robert the
Bruce laid waste much of East Durham as far south as Hartlepool in the
years after Bannockburn. In 1337 Robert de Herrington, vicar of Dalton,
complained to his superiors in Durham that his parish had again been
wasted and depopulated by the Scots, this time led by the Bruce’s son, who
had taken advantage of the English war with France. Previously 15
husbandmen and 15 cottagers paid tithes and now there were only five
husbandmen and six cottagers - all in a state of near beggary and unable
to pay him anything. He was then granted 40 shillings annually for life.
There was worse to come for East Durham was particularly badly affected by
the Black Death (bubonic plague) which reached England in 1348 and may
have wiped out a third of the population.
Down the centuries the Tower, Hall and Manor
of Dalden passed through the hands of the de Dalden, Bowes and Collingwood
families. The latter, staunchly Catholic, are believed to have abandoned
the Tower and Hall in c. 1600 for their more comfortable home in the
adjacent manor of Seaham which they also owned. Their surname features
heavily in the early registers from Seaham St. Mary the Virgin which began
in the Commonwealth era. The Collingwoods sold out the twin estates of
Seaham and Dalden to the Milbankes in c. 1676/78 and they in turn sold out
to the Londonderrys in 1821. By then Dalden Hall had been converted to a
farmhouse and the Tower had long been in ruins.
From its origin in c. AD1150 to c. 1575 St.
Andrew’s was a Catholic church in a completely Catholic country, a
Catholic known world. At some point in the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603)
it became Anglican. The parish records survive from a century later by
which time both England and Scotland were united under one King and
Catholics were a small, feared, despised and persecuted minority.
The town and port of Seaham Harbour was
founded at Dawdon in 1828 and a new parish was created out of old St.
Andrew’s in 1845 to cater for the great increase in population. Seaham
Harbour’s records for the period 1828-45 therefore are included in the
registers of St. Andrews. Murton Colliery, originally called Dalton New
Winning, was sunk between 1838 and 1843 but the new community which
evolved did not receive its own Anglican church chapel until 1875.
Murton’s records before that year are therefore also included in the St.
Andrew’s registers. Since 1875 St. Andrew’s has been the parish church for
only the two small communities of Dalton-le-Dale and Cold Hesledon. Today
‘events’ (baptisms, banns, marriages and burials) at St. Andrew’s are
exceedingly rare and it has the status of a chapel-of-ease (i.e., a
part-time church) for its ‘parent’ church at Murton. The vicar of Murton
is also the vicar of Dalton-le-Dale.
One entry in the baptismal registers in
April 1857 is worthy of particular notice. A Margaret Jane Mowbray was
christened whose parents were given as William and Mary Ann of Murton. The
mother is better known to history as Mary Ann Cotton (her fourth and
bigamous husband was Frederick Cotton), Great Britain’s alleged most
prolific murderer, who is credited by some authorities with some 21
killings, one of whom was the child Margaret Jane Mowbray. Mary Ann Cotton
was executed at Durham Gaol in March 1873 for one murder she definitely
did do - that of her stepson Charles Edward Cotton at West Auckland.
By 1911 the population of Dalton-le-Dale had
risen to 472. It has remained more or less stable ever since. There is
little left of the old village for most of the older housing was swept
away in the 1950s and 60s. One of the most distinguished Dalton-le-Dale
residents was the late Tom MacNee, co-author (with David Angus) of ‘Seaham
- the First 100 Years’ and ‘The Changing Face of Seaham’. See those two
books for more information about the village. The village has one pub, The
Times Inn, mentioned in the 1841 census but probably much older than that
as it was situated on the main road from Sunderland to Stockton.
TOP
Chapter 4, Dawdon (Seaham Harbour)
Population changes in
the 19th. Century were:
1. The Londonderrys Arrive:
On April 3 1819 a marriage
took place in London which was to have a profound effect on the ancient
Saxon settlement of Seaham. An Ulsterman, Lord Charles Stewart, a widower
of 41 with a 14 year old son, took as his second wife Lady Frances Anne
Vane Tempest, a 19 year old coal heiress whose pits were in the Penshaw
and Rainton districts of her native County Durham. The bride was given
away by the Duke of Wellington, a Napoleonic War comrade of the
bridegroom. She was the second largest coal exporter on the River Wear
behind Lord Lambton and had an annual income of £60,000, a collosal sum in
those days. Lord Stewart himself was far from penniless and though he
currently ranked only as a humble baron he expected one day to inherit a
much higher title, a marquessate, from first his father and then his
childless half-brother Viscount Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary and
Leader of the House of Commons and Prime Minister in all but name, the man
actually in charge of the British Empire. On his marriage Lord Stewart
adopted the surname Vane and henceforth would sign himself as Vane
Londonderry. Before the marriage Lord Charles Stewart had never visited
County Durham and knew nothing whatsoever about his young bride's
business, coal. It was explained to him that the produce from her Rainton
and
Penshaw collieries had to be taken on a
primitive horse-drawn wagonway to Frances Anne's own staiths on the Wear
not far from Penshaw. There it was loaded on to very small vessels called
keels and taken downriver to be reloaded on to much larger, ocean-going
vessels, for onward shipment to London and the Low Countries. Wages to the
keelmen and other incidentals were costing his new wife some £10,000 a
year but there seemed no way round this overhead. A few miles to the east
of Rainton Colliery lay a possible solution to the problem - Dalden
Ness, near Seaham.
Electioneering over two decades and the
building of Seaham Hall had virtually bankrupted Sir Ralph Milbanke, owner
of the sister manors of Seaham and Dalden. The final straw came when he
had to raise an additional £20,000 as a dowry for his only child Anne
Isabella on her marriage to the poet Lord Byron at Seaham in January 1815.
It was intended that the Byrons should take over Seaham Hall and live
happily ever after while Sir Ralph and his wife moved to his ancestral
home at Halnaby in North Yorkshire. The inheritance, via his wife, of her
brother's Wentworth money and property in April 1815 saved Sir Ralph
Milbanke's financial bacon and the ending of his daughter's marriage the
following year rendered the Seaham and Dalden estates as surplus to
requirements. What was to be done about them ? The exposed Durham
coalfield at Rainton was only four miles away and Sir Ralph conceived the
absurd idea of constructing a port at Seaham out of the living rock of
Dalden Ness to export coal from inland pits such as Rainton and the
projected Hetton Colliery. In 1820 he even went so far as to commission a
well-known engineer, William Chapman, to draw up a plan for 'Port Milbanke',
but the amount of money involved in such a high-risk project discouraged
him. He could not have guessed that vast mineral wealth lay far beneath
his own estates and that very soon the technology to extract it would be
available. He was too impatient even to wait for the results of the
experimental digging into the East Durham limestone escarpment going on
at that very moment at Hetton and decided to sell Seaham and Dalden to the
highest bidder and retire to the Wentworth headquarters in Leicestershire.
His plan for a harbour at Seaham and a railway inland now came to Lord
Stewart's knowledge and he determined to buy the estates when he heard
that they were to be sold at a public auction.
This took place on October 13 1821 and his
bid of £63,000 was successful. He raised part of the money by charging it
on his half-brother's Irish property. The Milbankes then left Seaham for
their other estates in Yorkshire and Leicestershire and made way for the
new lords of the manors of Seaham and Dalden. Lord Stewart's father,
Robert Stewart, 1st. Marquess of Londonderry, died in 1821 and was
succeeded in his titles and possessions by his childless eldest son
Castlereagh who became the 2nd. Marquess of Londonderry. A year later his
mind became unhinged and he cut his own throat at his house at Cray in
Kent. His titles and possessions passed to his half-brother Charles who
thus became the 3rd. Marquess of Londonderry, the title history remembers
him by.
2. The Concealed Durham Coalfield
The eastern half of the Durham coalfield,
upon which Seaham and all of Easington District is situated, is concealed
by many hundreds of feet of Permian magnesian limestone. The powerful
steam engines required to drain deep mines did not exist until the 1820s.
As the third decade of the nineteenth century dawned technological
advances had been made which at last made it possible to investigate just
what lay under the rolling limestone hills of East Durham. At Rainton,
four miles west of Seaham, coal is just below the ground. A few hundred
yards away at Hetton, at the start of the limestone escarpment, the coal
is several hundred feet below the surface. It was there on December 19
1820 that the new machinery was put to the test. Deep mining was an
entirely new, dangerous and expensive business, far beyond the financial
means of most coal owners, and necessitated the creation of a large
company for the purpose. Whilst digging proceeded the famous engineer and
pioneer of steam engines, George Stephenson, began construction of a
railway from the pithead at Hetton to Sunderland in March 1821. The new
line, the first in the world to be designed to use locomotives, was some
8 miles in length and ran to the Hetton Company's own staiths on the river
Wear, where coal could be loaded directly on to large vessels, thus
missing out a number of middlemen at Penshaw and on the river. The
excellent publicity received launched the Stephensons on to even greater
things, as the world knows. More importantly for the history of County
Durham, coal was found at the Hetton Lyons Blossom Pit sinking, at 650
and 900 feet, in seams six and a half feet thick ! By 1832 Hetton Lyons
and its two sister pits Eppleton and Elemore were annually producing
318,000 tons of coal worth £174,000, and the combine was the largest mine
in England. Hetton Colliery and its railway proved that 650 feet of
limestone, water and quicksand and a large hill (Warden Law) blocking the
way to Sunderland were not insurmountable obstacles to the exploitation of
the rich reserves of coal and that achievement did not go unnoticed.
Before long others, such as Lord Londonderry, Lord Lambton (1st. Earl of
Durham) and Colonel Thomas Braddyll of Haswell, would enter the arena and
the tapping of the deeply concealed Durham coalfield began in earnest.
In 1801 the total population of all County
Durham was a mere 150,000. Half of these people lived in the ancient towns
of Chester-le-Street, Gateshead, South Shields, Sunderland, Stockton,
Hartlepool, Darlington and Durham City and the rest of the county, not
just the highground, was as empty as some parts of western Ireland are
today. In 1820 Seaham, Silksworth, Ryhope, Murton, Hetton, South Hetton,
Haswell and Shotton were tiny communities in an East Durham landscape
which had been agricultural and unchanging for countless centuries. Over
the course of the next century however the population of County Durham
increased by more than twelve-fold to 1.88 million in 1901 as the
coalfield expanded both eastward to exploit the concealed seams and
southward towards Yorkshire. Most of the newcomers arrived from the other
counties of the Great Northern Coalfield (Cumberland and Northumberland)
but some came from established mining areas far afield. Murton and Seaham
collieries for instance received a large number of Cornish lead and tin
miners in the 1850s and 1860s. The effects of the potato famine on the
Irish, with starvation and typhoid from 1846-51, brought many of them too.
Seaham Harbour certainly took its share of these as is evidenced by the
Irish Back Street but strangely few of them reached Seaham/Seaton
Colliery, even at this lowest of low-points in Irish affairs. Seaham
Colliery and Seaham Harbour also absorbed at least two waves of unemployed
agricultural labourers from Norfolk and Suffolk in the 1860s and 70s.
3.
Seaham Harbour & the Rainton Railway
The favourable views of William Chapman
regarding the new harbour at Seaham and a railway connection to the
Rainton pits were reinforced by the opinions of other leading engineers of
the day - Rennie, Telford and Logan, whom Stewart consulted before finally
deciding to proceed. Lack of cash caused the postponement of the project
several times. Though he was still short of money Lord Londonderry decided
in 1828 that a start must be made to the new harbour and railway. The
Rainton & Seaham railway was initially only 5 miles long, from Seaham
Harbour to the main Londonderry pit at Rainton Meadows, but later
additions created a network of over 16 miles of railway track. Fixed steam
engines and early locomotives hauled the coal from the numerous Rainton
pits to the top of the Copt Hill. At a site just opposite to the public
house the new line passed under the Seaham to Houghton road in a short
tunnel. The Hetton Colliery Railway at this very same point traversed the
road by means of a level crossing. Thereafter the going to Seaham was
comparatively easy and more fixed engines took over to haul the loads
across the fields of Warden Law and Slingley, skirting to the south of
Seaton village. From Seaton Bank Top a gravity incline and then a final
fixed engine (the Londonderry Engine) brought the coal to the top of the
Mill Inn Bank, where one day Seaham Colliery would be sited. Two
habitations, the Londonderry Engine Cottages, were erected to accomodate
the men who operated the engine and their families. These were the first
dwellings of what became New Seaham. They stood just behind what became
Walter Willson's store. The last leg of the Rainton & Seaham railway,
from there to the new harbour, was downhill and utilized a self-acting
incline system. The 1830's saw further exploitation of the concealed
coalfield. South Hetton, Haswell, Thornley, Kelloe, Wearmouth (Pemberton
Main), Wingate and Murton collieries were sunk. The known coalfield
advanced to the edge of Londonderry's land at Seaham and Dalton. The next
decade saw Castle Eden, Shotton, South Wingate, Trimdon, Trimdon Grange
and Seaton/Seaham collieries appear.
4. The Great Strike of 1844
In April 1844 all of the Durham and
Northumberland collieries came out on strike, including Londonderry's. The
miners' demands included a half-yearly contract and at least 4 days work
or wages every week. There were as yet no producing pits in Seaham, just
the digging by the North Hetton Colliery Company going on at the projected
Seaton Colliery, but in the infamous 'Seaham Letter' Lord Londonderry
warned all traders there not to give credit to the Rainton and Penshaw
strikers, or else they would become 'marked' men and would henceforth be
denied any business. If the tradesmen in Seaham Harbour persisted he
threatened to remove all of his own custom to Newcastle. He even suggested
that he was prepared to ruin 'his' town if he did not get his own way. He
evicted those ringleaders at Rainton and Penshaw who were his tenants. He
also imported a number of workers from his estates in the north of Ireland
to make way for them. The other owners also despatched agents all over the
kingdom to recruit replacements for the strikers and they too carried out
mass evictions. Large numbers of blacklegs and their families were brought
from Wales on the promise of excellent wages and free housing. They were
not told that they were intended as strike-breakers. When they arrived in
the northeast of England they discovered their true function but had no
money to return home. They had no choice but to work to raise funds.
Thanks to their efforts after four months the strike was broken.
Once again the 'Masters' were triumphant and
could take their pick of those returning to work. The lot of the blacklegs
now became a hard one. The special wages they had received during the
strike came to an abrupt end and they were afforded no special protection
from the former strikers. At Seaton Delavel in Northumberland the Welsh
blacklegs were repeatedly thrashed by the native people and eventually all
but one was driven back to the Land of Song. He remained in the village
for 20 years, an outcast denied communication with anyone, before at last
even he got the message and departed. The union was now extremely weak and
many collieries gave it up altogether. It was effectively finished by 1852
and dead and buried by the following year. Unionism would not recover its
strength for another generation. Thirty five years would pass before the
next major confrontation and in that time Seaham Colliery appeared and
became one of the most important mining villages in the county and thus at
the forefront of the battle for miner's rights. One good thing was
achieved in this interlude. The Mines' Regulation Bill passed into law in
the Parliamentary session of 1850, despite the fierce and completely
unprincipled opposition of the 3rd. Marquess of Londonderry, making the
appointment of inspectors of mines necessary.
5.
Seaham Harbour before the Londonderrys
In her later years Lady Frances Anne would
boast to her visitors at Seaham Hall that before the Londonderrys arrived
there had been not a habitation or even a path in what became the boom
town of Seaham Harbour. This was not strictly true. East Durham had been
agricultural for countless centuries and the few residents had to live
somewhere near to the fields they tended. In 1828 at least two farmsteads
existed in the future Seaham Harbour, Dene House Farm (now demolished) and
Dawdon Hill Farm which still survives. The latter thus has an outstanding
claim to being the oldest continuously inhabited structure in ‘Seaham
Harbour’ though it may have rivals in terms of ‘Greater Seaham’ for some
of the other outlying farms are clearly far older than Seaham Hall (1792).
Apart from these two fixed habitations there is evidence of transients
living on the beaches and sometimes occupying the numerous caves along the
rugged coastline. The Portsmouth Telegraph of October 14 1799 reported
thus:
Woman from the Seashore
‘On Thursday se(ven)’nnight a woman was
brought to the Lunatic Hospital near Newcastle who has lived upwards of
three years among the rocks on the sea-shore near Seaham. From whence, or
in what manner she first came there is unknown, but she speaks in the
Scottish dialect and talks of Loch Stewart and AberGordon in a rambling
manner. She is about thirty-five years of age, inoffensive and cheerful,
and during her residence among the rocks was fantastically dressed in the
rags which chance or the wrecks threw in her way; she always kept a good
fire of wood or coal, which the sea threw up, and it is supposed lived
upon shellfish & c. What is remarkable, a beard has grown upon the lower
part of her chin, nearly an inch long, and bushy like the whiskers of a
man.’
The parish of Dalton-le-Dale contained just
211 inabitants in 1821. 35 of these lived in the ‘township’ of Dawdon,
where the future Seaham Harbour would be located.
TOP
6. Events 1828-41
By 1831, three years after the foundation of
the town and port of Seaham Harbour, Dalton parish contained 1,305 people,
1,022 of them in Dawdon. The population of Seaham (Old Seaham and
Seaton-with-Slingley) in 1831 was 264, barely up from 1821. The first list
of Greater Seaham residents that I have been able to find is contained in
Pigot’s Trade Directory for County Durham for 1834, six years into Seaham
Harbour’s history. This mentions only the names of tradesmen wealthy
enough to pay to have their names included and even then simply descibes
their addresses as ‘Seaham Harbour’ but it gives us some clues as to which
buildings and structures were erected first. Pigot’s Directory mentions
several public houses (The Golden Lion, King’s Arms, Londonderry Arms,
Lord Seaham Inn, Lynn Arms, Noah’s Ark, The Wellington, the Wheatsheaf and
the Windmill, which later may have become the Braddyll Arms) and so we
know that at least part of North and South Railway Streets, South
Crescent, North Terrace and Adolphus Place were constructed by 1834. Not
until seven years later was a full list made of all the residents, the
census of June 1841, the first to include personal details in the returns.
In June 1841 after thirteen years of
existence and a decade fully operational the new port was already
functioning to capacity and would be greatly expanded over the next
decade. According to the census of that year Seaham Harbour already had a
Harbour Master, Coast Guards, Customs Officers, Pilots, Seamen, Ropemakers,
Ship Builders, Ship Chandlers, Sailmakers, Bellmen and Keelmen. The census
also mentioned all of those trades necessary for the construction of a new
town - Joiners, Carpenters, Builders, Labourers, Blacksmiths, Stonemasons
and Painters. Pit Sinkers, Coal Trimmers and Brakesmen were also
mentioned. Trimmers worked at the docks but the nearest pit being sunk was
Murton (which finally came on stream in 1843). Seaton-Seaham Colliery was
still in the future and the nearest producing pits were South Hetton,
Haswell and Eppleton. The Pit Sinkers must have commuted to work, possibly
by getting rides on the wagons on the Braddyll Railway. There were also
Engineers, Enginemen, Enginewrights, Wagonmen and Wagonwrights resident
in Seaham Harbour to operate the two vital mineral lines to the inalnd
collieries.
Also mentioned in the 1841 census were
cotton weavers, tinners and brazers, dressmakers, tailors, drapers,
shoemakers, potters, hairdressers, paper makers, straw hat makers and
bookbinders. Seaham Harbour in 1841 also had clerks, agents, lawyers and
schoolteachers. These middle classes were employers of housekeepers, a
governess in one case, servants and gardeners. Supplying entertainment to
the community we find brewers, coopers (barrel makers) and publicans. Only
a few of the pubs were named in the census - many smaller establishments
(‘beer shops’, often simply somebody’s front room) were not. Provisions
were supplied by butchers, grocers, breadbakers, shopkeepers, pedlars and
druggists. Producing the food for the growing town were the farmers,
agricultural/farm labourers, husbandmen, millers and millwrights in the
surrounding fields. Transport in this, the twilight of the Age of the
Horse, was provided by carriers, cartwrights, waggon drivers and coach
drivers. Seaham Harbour also had a postman (The Penny Post was introduced
the year before the census).
It is said that the first two things that
any new settlement needs are a cemetery and a prison. The new church of
St. John’s (completed 1840) provided the former and the ‘Kitty’ in Back
North Railway Street supplied the latter. Two unknown males were resident
in the lock-up on the night of the census. Keeping law and order were two
policemen and a prison officer. Reinforcements could be sent for from
Sunderland or Durham and there was a large garrison of troops permanently
based in Sunderland to deal with any situation in the coalfield. Like all
ports Seaham Harbour would have been a den of vice, drinking, gambling and
prostitution. The pimps and ladies of the night would have disguised their
presence in the census by declaring to the enumerator that their
profession was something very different, a dressmaker perhaps, or a
labourer. Until the coming of gas lighting in the next decade Seaham
Harbour may well have been a very dark, threatening and frightening place
when the sun went down. Some people would say it still is.
The 3rd. Marquess of Londonderry originally
envisaged a magnificent town designed by the famous Newcastle architect
Dobson to back the port of Seaham, but shortage of cash prevented this and
in fact compelled him to lease land to anyone. Only on the North Terrace
and at Bath Terrace were better quality houses built. Much of the rest was
ramshackle and degenerated into slums well before the end of the century.
What emerged by the time of the 1841 census was a grid-pattern development
on both sides (but primarily the north) of the unfenced Rainton and Seaham
Railway. We know that the Londonderry Arms was the first building to begin
construction and that the Golden Lion was probably the first to be
completed.
South of the Rainton line there was very
little development of housing by 1841. South Crescent, South Railway
Street, Back South Railway Street and Pilot Terrace were complete and a
recent start had been made on Adolphus Street, Frances Street, South
Crescent and Church Street. Beyond those embryonic avenues the fields
began which led to Dawdon Field House farm. Before very long though those
same fields would be earmarked for further industrial development. A
pottery already existed but this would vanish before the enumerator
visited again. Examples of its produce can be seen at Sunderland Library.
North of the Rainton mineral railway line
was the real town - a hollow rectangle whose sides were North Terrace,
(what would become) Tempest Road, Henry Street and North Railway Street.
Inside the ‘Rectangle’ was still virtually empty but a start had been made
on John Street. Outside the rectangle was still countryside broken up by
the occasional new structures like the Baths, the Garden House (later
called Adam & Eve’s Gardens), Wood Cottages on Terrace Green and New Lodge
and by that solitary old building, Dene House Farm. Already the farmer was
hemmed in by the Rainton line and a bridge had to be thrown across the
waggonway to allow him access to his fields to the south. The day would
come when he would have to wend his way through acres of humanity to reach
his diminishing workplace. In the census of 1841 the population of
Dalton-le-Dale parish was 2,709 (which included Dalton village, East
Murton, the embryonic Murton Colliery village, Cold Hesledon and the new
town of Seaham Harbour, regarded as part of Dawdon township).
7. Events 1841-65
On August 23 1843 the township of Dawdon
(Seaham Harbour) was severed from the parish of Dalton-le-Dale, and made
into a separate chapelry, and in 1845 was created into a separate
incumbency, Saint John the Baptist, whose patronage was vested in the 3rd.
Marquess of Londonderry. That old tyrant appointed a like-minded Scot, the
Reverend Angus Bethune of South Shields, as the first Vicar. He became
personal chaplain to Lady Frances Anne and baptised three generations of
the Londonderry family (in London not Seaham). Bethune, who lived into his
nineties and who has a street at Deneside named after him, also became the
town’s chief magistrate. He could always be relied upon by the
Londonderrys to rule in their favour and he played an important and
sinister role in the suppression of the disorder which followed the Seaham
Colliery Disaster of September 1880. After his stint at St. John’s Bethune
became vicar of St. Mary the Virgin at Old Seaham where he is buried.
In the 1851 census therefore the figures for
Seaham Harbour were finally separated from the rest of Dalton-le-Dale
parish. By then the population of the infant town had reached 4,042
(including the absent mariners), double the size of a decade earlier.
Dalton-le-Dale village’s population actually fell slightly in that period.
Seaton-with-Slingley increased by 25 people. The population of ‘Seaham’
itself (formerly just Old Seaham and outlying farms) radically increased
for it encompassed the new Seaham and Seaton collieries. At the time of
the 1851 census neither pit was yet producing and the population of
Seaton/Seaham collieries was still quite small. By 1865 nearly 1000
colliers would live and work there. The sinking of Seaton Colliery (the
High Pit, owned by the North Hetton & Grange Colliery Company) began in
1844 but coal was not drawn until 1852. Seaham Colliery (the Low Pit,
owned by Lord Londonderry) began sinking in 1849 and production started
after Seaton but the precise date is unknown. Seaham Harbour accomodated
the overspill from the new concerns.
In 1843 Lord Londonderry’s eldest daughter
Fanny (Frances Ann) was married to the Marquess of Blandford, eldest son
and heir of the Duke of Marlborough. The union was celebrated in Seaham
Harbour by the naming of the new Blandford Place and later of Marlborough
Street. The south docks at Seaham Harbour were finally completed in 1845.
Between them Lord (the driving force) and Lady (the money) Londonderry
had created a port and town where none had existed twenty years before.
In the decade 1841-51 most of the existing streets expanded in size to
absorb the waves of immigrants coming from all directions. New streets
were built - Bath Terrace (1848), Blandford Place and Adelaide Row.
Within the ‘Rectangle’ of North Terrace -
(what would become) Tempest Road - Henry Street - North Railway Street
there was further development. John Street trebled in size and William
Street appeared. North of the Rainton railway was still the most important
residential and business sector of the growing town. A Gasworks was
constructed in the dene and the town was at last illuminated at night.
South of the Rainton line there had been few changes. Blandford Place and
Adelaide Row were erected, South Terrace expanded from 1 to 9 households
and Church Street, destined for greater things, now had 45 families but
the development was mostly on the north side of the street and even that
had a large gap in the middle of it. It was still possible to see
Kin(g)ley Hill from Back South Railway Street. Frances Street went up from
1 to 12 households but Adolphus Street barely grew at all.
In about 1855 Greater Seaham was surveyed in
preparation for the first national Ordnance Survey. The resultant map was
printed in 1857. The original can be examined at the Durham Record Office
at County Hall. Surveyed at the time it was, half-way between the censuses
of 1851 and 1861, the map gives us priceless clues about the development
of our town of Seaham Harbour. Several places are shown (e.g. some of the
streets inside of the ‘Rectangle’) which were not mentioned in the 1851
census and we can thus deduce that they were built between 1851 and 1855.
Likewise several places (e.g. Seaham Cottages, Marlborough Street) are
mentioned in the 1861 census but are not on the map - therefore we know
that they were built between 1855 and 1861. We have one other priceless
clue about these early days in the history of our town in the form of the
remarkable and exquisite wooden model of Seaham Harbour made in c. 1861
which hangs at the back of Seaham Library and was apparently made by an
employee of Lady Frances Anne, a Mr. Cummins, for show at the Paris
Exhibition. It is not known whether or not it reached the show. For years
it gathered dust in the attic of the Londonderry Offices and was
discovered only in the 1960s when the Londonderry family finally abandoned
the building to the Police. It was restored and now hangs proudly in the
intellectual centre of the town.
The decade 1851-61 saw another great
expansion of the population of Greater Seaham, from five to nine thousand
people. The main reason for this next phase of development was the
stimulus of the new Seaton and Seaham Collieries but additional demand
for housing was created by the new Londonderry Wagonworks and two new
bottleworks. The immigrants came from all directions but especially from
the Emerald Isle.
Seaton Colliery began production in 1852.
Seaham Colliery began producing later but the exact date is not known. By
the end of the decade nearly a thousand colliers and their families were
employed at the two pits. Seaham/Seaton Colliery pit village was erected
to accomodate them but the building could not keep pace with demand.
Seaham Harbour, Seaton and Dalton-le-Dale tried to absorb the overflow
but those tiny communities could not cope with the influx of newcomers.
Four rows of houses were built at Dawdon which were initially called
Seaham New Cottages but which eventually became known as Swinebank
Cottages. It is not known if these 83 dwellings were owned by Seaton
Colliery or Seaham Colliery or both. In the census of 1861 several more
new structures were described as ‘New Cottages’ - these would eventually
become Ropery Walk, Candlish Street, Gallery Row and Fenwick’s Row. The
future Ropery Walk was inhabited by the workers of the Londonderry
Wagonworks. The future Candlish Street, Gallery Row and Fenwick’s Row were
occupied by the employees of the two bottleworks which opened in Seaham in
about 1853. Before the decade was out Fenwick’s was bought out by Candlish
and the two bottleworks became one. Fenwick himself was remembered in the
name of the street.
Despite the erection of ‘New Cottages’ the
demand for more and more housing was far from exhausted. Several new
streets or habitations were constucted in Seaham Harbour - Sebastopol
Terrace (for the well-heeled), Green Street, Back Adelaide Row, Back
Church Street. Inside the ‘Rectangle’ the available space was filled up -
North John Street, Back John Street, Back William Street, Back Henry
Street and Back Tempest Place all appeared. The gap between the
‘Rectangle’ and Dene House Farm also began to fill up - Vane Terrace was
built. A start was also made in filling the space between Blandford Place
and the new railway station - work began on Marlborough Street. It
contained 45 families in the 1861 census but would soon have far more.
The Dowager Marchioness built her imposing
Londonderry Offices in 1857 next to Terrace Green. This impressive
structure still stands and is currently Seaham’s Police Station. Its
predecessor as Police HQ was erected on the corner of Tempest Road and
Vane Terrace at about the same time as the Londonderry Offices. It served
the town and the force for over a century. In the same era Rock House was
built just across the road. The decade 1851-61 also saw the appearance of
several ramshackle structures which would soon degenerate into slums and
which contributed greatly to the very high death-rate in Seaham Harbour -
the worst in the county by 1900. Amongst these were Pattison’s, Hunter’s,
Nicholson’s and Todd’s Buildings.
By 1850 the docks at Seaham Harbour were
seriously overloaded by coal from a dozen inland pits and something had to
be done to ease the pressure before Seaton and Seaham collieries came on
stream. The solution was to create a railway from Seaham Harbour to the
much larger port facilities at Sunderland. On a bitterly cold day,
February 8 1853, the 3rd. Marquess, now aged 75, dug the first turf of the
Londonderry Seaham and Sunderland Railway (LS&SR). He was fated not to see
the completion of this project. Passenger traffic began on the line on
July 1 1855 with stations at Seaham Harbour, Seaham Colliery, Seaham Hall
(for the private use of the Londonderrys and their guests), Ryhope East
and Hendon Burn. The new line was connected to the Rainton and Braddyll
railways. Seaham Harbour Station was a short walk from the edge of town at
Blandford Place. By 1861 the space in between was developed as the
‘Marlborough’ area and the edge of town advanced to the new railway line.
There was no southern extension of the LS&SR towards Hartlepool until 1905
so Seaham Harbour was a deadend on the railway map for half a century. To
get to Hartlepool from Seaham it was necessary to travel north on the
LS&SR to Ryhope East station, walk the few yards to Ryhope West and change
to a southbound NER (North Eastern Railway) train to Hartlepool via
Seaton, Murton and Haswell. The LS&SR had its own terminus in Sunderland
at Hendon Burn before the Central Station was finally completed in 1879.
The legend ‘LS&SR’ can still be seen stamped on the railway bridge at
Ryhope.
Already in poor health the 3rd. Marquess
caught influenza at the end of February 1854 and this developed into
pneumonia. He died at his London mansion, Holdernesse House, on March 6.
He was succeeded in all of the titles he had inherited from his father and
brother by his eldest son (from his first marriage) Frederick Stewart who
thus became the 4th. Marquess of Londonderry. All of the titles the 3rd.
Marquess had gained since 1821 however passed to his eldest son from his
second marriage, Henry Stewart (Lord Seaham), who thus became Earl Vane.
Henry simultaneously became heir to his half-brother Frederick who was
childless and looked like remaining so and also to his mother Frances
Anne. On her husband’s death she regained all of her possessions including
the Durham pits, Wynyard and Seaham Hall. For 35 years the Marchioness had
deferred to her husband and contented herself with the roles of mother,
wife and society hostess but now she grasped the opportunity to come out
of his shadow. From then on Seaham Hall was her headquarters and the
collieries and the harbour her business. She developed the habit of
spending the summer and early autumn at Garron Tower in Ulster, Christmas
at Wynyard and the rest of the year at Seaham Hall, with the exception of
a short visit to London for ‘the season’. In December 1859 she laid the
foundation for another new enterprise, the Seaham Harbour Blast Furnace,
in Dawdon Field Dene, next door to the ancient farmhouse.
The last major famine in peacetime in
Western Europe occurred in Ireland at the end of the 1840s. Blight
destroyed the staple crop of potatoes in several successive years and the
population, never prosperous, was reduced to starvation. Millions
emigrated to Australia and North America to escape the horror that
engulfed those left behind. Many could afford only to reach England and
Scotland and those two countries found themselves overwhelmed by the
sheer numbers of illiterate, penniless and starving Irish who turned up in
every town and village looking for work. Far from being sympathetic the
British public were openly hostile to the newcomers who were prepared to
work for far smaller wages than the average Briton and were thus perceived
as a threat. Seaham took more than its fair share of the Irish and you
will find hundreds of them in the census of 1861, especially in the ‘Irish
Back Street ’ (Back South Railway Street). Many Seaham people (this
co-author included) descend from this Catholic Irish influx in the 1850s -
it is the explanation for the high proportion of Catholics in the town
compared to the rest of England.
TOP
Immigration to our ‘boom’ town was not
limited to the Irish in the decade 1851-61. The first of several waves of
refugees from the dying lead and tin mining industries of Devon and
Cornwall began arriving in the 1850s. A street was named after them at
Seaham Colliery and an entire district of Murton but you will also find
lots of Cornishmen and Devonians in Seaham Harbour in the 1861 census. A
swarm of unemployed agricultural labourers also came from Norfolk - lured
north by the prospect of higher wages and more consistent work by the
agents of Lord Londonderry and others.
In 1859 the
Government, alarmed by the apparent belligerency of France under Napoleon
III, formed the Volunteer movement and invited towns and cities,
especially those on the south and east coasts, to look to their own
defence. The Marchioness responded by creating the Seaham Volunteer
Artillery Brigade in 1860. In 1862 she built Seaham’s first Drill Hall
near Castlereagh Bridge. Seaham Harbour and Seaham Colliery men flocked to
the colours. Drill Halls were also constructed by Frances Anne or her heir
Henry at Silksworth, Rainton, Durham and Seaham Colliery. Eventually 12
batteries (over 1,000 men) were created, out of a total County strength of
16 batteries. An indication of how seriously the Londonderry
family took their private army can be found
throughout the 1861 and later censuses - the number of professional
soldiers they were prepared to employ and house in order to keep ‘their’
Volunteers in tip-top condition. All Londonderry agents were expected,
indeed required, to train as officers. The 6th. Marquess, grandson of
Frances Anne, built a huge new Drill Hall in 1888 and donated the Drill
Field, now the site of Princess Road school playing field. He used to
delight in leading the annual inspection and parade from the Drill Hall to
the Drill Field in full ceremonial dress. One of the Volunteer uniforms is
retained at Durham Records Office at County Hall. In 1908 the Volunteers
were absorbed into the Territorial Army. There is a still a pub in Seaham
called The Volunteers, last remnant of Frances Street.
In 1863 a Local Board of Health was created
to conduct Greater Seaham's affairs. It was led from 1873-94 by J. B.
Eminson, chief financial agent for the Londonderrys in Seaham from
1869-96. The Board became Seaham Harbour Urban District Council by the
Local Government Act of 1894. Eminson also led the new body from 1895-96.
During his 27 years service he filled the leading position in the town. He
was also Chairman of Seaham Magistrates and a member of the Easington
Guardians (Work House). Despite the semblance of a kind of democracy after
1863 Seaham was still a family fiefdom.
When an Act of Parliament prohibited the
working of coal-mines without two outlets from each seam Lady Frances Anne
decided that the simplest way to comply with this legislation in the case
of Seaham Colliery was to buy Seaton Colliery from the North Hetton and
Grange Colliery Company and amalgamate it with Seaham. This was done in
November 1864, and was virtually the last business deal she completed. The
health of the Dowager Marchioness declined rapidly after 1862. The news of
the death of her second and favourite son Adolphus in June 1864 broke her
heart. Within weeks she suffered a major heart attack at Garron Tower in
Ulster and returned to Seaham in September seriously ill. By Christmas she
seemed to have recovered but this was to prove an illusion. In the New
Year she had a relapse and died at the Hall on January 20 1865, three days
after her 65th. birthday. She was buried with her husband and her Vane
ancestors at Long Newton in the south of County Durham. Her remains were
escorted there from Seaham, the town she had founded, by the Volunteers
she had created. Her possessions, apart from Garron Tower in Ulster,
passed to her eldest son Henry, Earl Vane. The Founders of Seaham Harbour
and Seaham Colliery had certainly been characters. Their immediate and
much less colourful descendants took little interest in their homes and
businesses in the Northeast of England. Their visits were rare and usually
confined to shooting parties at Wynyard, their mansion near Stockton. By
and large they were content to leave everything in the hands of agents,
hard men who were paid by results. Nineteen years would pass before the
next generation of the Londonderry family were again regular visitors to
the town their ancestors had created. For months and years at a time
Seaham Hall remained empty, maintained by a skeleton staff. With the death
of Frederick Stewart, 4th. Marquess of Londonderry, in a nursing home at
Hastings on November 25 1872, the connection between the marquessate and
Seaham was restored. His titles and possessions passed to his half-brother
Henry, Earl Vane, who became the 5th Marquess of Londonderry at the age of
51.
8. Events 1865-81
Seaham’s most famous resident, Lady Frances
Anne, died on January 20 1865. She missed the arrival of Seaham’s most
infamous resident by only a matter of days. Five days before her death, on
January 15, a 38 year old stoker called William Mowbray died of typhus
and diarrhoea at his humble home in Henry Street East at Hendon in
Sunderland, leaving a widow and two small daughters. The widow, Mary Ann
Mowbray, soon received £35 from the British Prudential Assurance Company
and promptly moved to Bolton’s Buildings (19 North Terrace) on Seaham’s
seafront. Her room may have been on the ground floor looking out to sea
though the current owner says that it was in a cottage at the back of the
house which has long since been demolished. Before long Mary Ann began an
affair with a married man, Joseph Nattress, but her two little girls were
in the way of a serious relationship. When the younger girl died of
‘typhus’ in April 1865 Mary Ann farmed out the remaining child to her
mother who lived at Seaham Colliery. Unfortunately Nattress’s wife then
found out and insisted that her husband move away from Seaham. Mary Ann
had to accept the fait accomplis and she moved back to Sunderland before
the summer was out. Her stay in our town was brief (a maximum of six
months in a 40 year life) and the bulk of her career was spent elsewhere
in the Northeast. She is known to history as Mary Ann Cotton (her fourth,
bigamous, husband was Frederick Cotton) who is suspected of being Great
Britain’s most prolific murderer. Most authorities credit her with 14 or
15 victims but she may have been responsible for as many as 21, a figure
which includes her own mother. Mary Ann returned to Seaham (Colliery) very
briefly in March 1867 to nurse her mother who was already dying of
hepatitis. She may have speeded her unfortunate parent on the way but this
is unlikely for it would not have benefited her in any way - quite the
reverse in fact for her mother’s demise meant that Mary Ann had to take
back her remaining daughter.
By the time of the 1871 census the
population of Dawdon township (which included Seaham Harbour) had reached
7,132. The population of Seaham (which included Old Seaham, outlying farms
and the new Seaton/Seaham colliery village) was 2,802. Dalton-le-Dale
still had only 128 residents. Seaton-with-Slingley had just 228.
There was little further development in
Seaham Harbour in the decade 1861-71. A start was made on Emily Street,
Caroline Street and Cornelia Terrace. The ‘Marlborough’ area was now
beginning to take shape. In the ‘Rectangle’ space was somehow found for
Little John Street. Sea View Villas and the North Battery appeared on the
seafront. The Blastfurnaces closed in 1865 but were soon replaced by the
Chemical Works. Watson Town was erected for the employees of the new
concern. The Vicar of St. John’s got a magnificent new house and the Roman
Catholic priest got a parsonage next to the Police Station and the new RC
church and school. The Irish were by now in Seaham in some numbers,
concentrating themselves in the poorest accomodation, particularly the
hovels of Back South Railway Street, which eventually became known as
‘Irish Back Street’. ‘The Irish’ versus ‘The Rest’ punchups became a
regular feature of Saturday nights when the colliers from New Seaham
descended on Seaham Harbour for an evenings entertainment. The origin of
the ‘Top-Enders’ (New Seaham) and ‘Bottom-Enders’ (Seaham Harbour) dispute
probably lies in these drunken brawls.
A terrible storm occurred on December 17
1872. Newspapers of the time reported that six Seaham-based ships were
lost with all hands but unfortunately they gave no names. It may be that
dozens of Seaham men went to a watery grave but there is no record of who
they were. The sea had not finished yet. On Tuesday June 26 1873 a
dreadful boat accident took the lives of five men within hailing distance
of the end of the pier.......
Having finished work and wishing for an
adventure on that endless summer evening of long ago seven bottlemakers
(John Jefferson, Ralph Hush, James Coyle, Robert Miller, Joseph Hall,
Benjamin Turns and Andrew Davison) engaged a coble and placed themselves
under the charge of Morley Scott junior, an experienced junior pilot. The
boat was brand new, the skipper an accomplished seaman, the seven
passengers were mature and sober men and the weather was very calm so
there should have been little possibility of a mishap. Morley Scott rowed
the coble out of the harbour and then raised the mast to catch what little
breeze there was. When they were about three hundred yards out from the
(old) north pier an event occurred which was to precipitate a tragedy -
Morley Scott’s brace button snapped and he was in danger of his trousers
falling down ! Being equipped with a needle and thread and a reserve
button he handed charge of the sail to James Coyle, who he believed was an
experienced sailor, whilst he effected an instant repair. A slight wind
then hit the sail, Coyle lost his grip and the sail fell into the water.
The situation was still not a dangerous one and Morley Scott, seeing the
slight problem, forgot his trousers and moved towards the side of the boat
to pull the mast back upright again. Unfortunately the other men in the
boat, being inexperienced, all moved instinctively to help him, the boat
overbalanced and tipped over throwing all eight into the water. Benjamin
Turns, Andrew Davison and Morley Scott survived and were able to walk home
unassisted. The other five drowned. Today there may be thousands of
descendants of the eight men in Seaham and elsewhere, most of them
probably oblivious of the events of that tragic evening 130 years and
several generations ago.
There were ugly scenes and near-tragedies at
both Seaham Harbour and Seaham Colliery when the Parliamentary Election
came round in February 1874 - directed against Tories in general who were
rightly blamed for the fact that none of the Seaham miners and other
workers had the vote. The Riot Act was read at Seaham Harbour and extra
police were brought in and some soldiers from the barracks at Sunderland.
The crowd was dispersed at Seaham Harbour but a section of it then headed
for the Mill Inn at New Seaham for uncertain reasons. The pub was attacked
and the landlord, John Barret Wells, was put under siege for over two
hours. He fired several shots from his revolver but in the end was only
saved from a beating or worse by the arrival of more police. Quite why he
was picked on is far from clear at this distance in time. It may be that
Wells had made the same mistake as those traders in Seaham Harbour who had
their places of business wrecked - he might have placed a Vote
Conservative poster in his pub window. Nationally the Conservatives had a
comfortable victory in the election but in County Durham they lost to
Liberals in all 13 seats. Because of the unrest in Seaham and elsewhere
the Conservatives demanded and received a second election in the Northern
Division of County Durham of which Seaham was a part. This duly took place
and the Tories recaptured one of the two seats for the division.
Seaham Harbour was almost as hard hit by the
Seaham Colliery Disaster of September 8 1880 as New Seaham. There were
many funerals at St. John’s as well as at Christ Church as the burial
registers show…………
12091880 Thomas Gibson, 37 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
12091880 John Hunter, 25 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 George Dixon, 47 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 James Kerton Kent, 16 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
14091880 Thomas Hindson, 39 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
18091880 James Slaven, 27 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 Matthew Charlton, 29 [Seaham
Colliery][Explosion 08091880]
18091880 Michael Owens, 14 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
19091880 George David Williamson, 18
[Colliery Explosion 08091880]
Note: The above was named as
David Williams on the ‘official’ Death List
19091880 Francis Watson, 55 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
20091880 William Barrass, 27 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
20091880 Robert Haswell, 19 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
20091880 Thomas Smith, 55 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 John James Hedley, 17 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
21091880 Luke Smith, 25 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 John Owens, 16 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 Thomas Cassidy, 22 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
29091880 Walter Murray, 42 [Seaham
Colliery][Colliery Explosion 08091880]
29091880 Christopher Smith, 36 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
01101880 Richard Cole, 46 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
01101880 Joseph Bowden [or Richardson], 22
[Colliery Explosion 08091880]
and over 10 months later………
28081881 Benjamin Redshaw, 25 [Seaham
Colliery][Colliery Explosion 08091880]
29081881 William Strawbridge, 48 [Seaham
Colliery][Colliery Explosion 08091880]
Of the 164 men and boys killed in the 1880
disaster 32 were not resident at Seaham Colliery Pit Village. 28 of these
lived at Seaham Harbour. Two (the brothers John and David Knox) lived at
Seaton Village. One (John Watson) lived at Murton. One (Robert Wharton)
lived at Sunderland. The badly-faded gravestones of at least two of the
victims of the Seaham Colliery disaster can be found leaning against the
walls of the disused St. John’s graveyard in Seaham Harbour. The heroic
George Dixon’s stone leans against the west wall and Walter Murray’s leans
against the south wall. Rest in Peace. Surely there is space inside St.
Johns to give sanctuary to these two reminders of a grim but glorious past
before time, the elements and vandals completely destroy them ?
The population of Greater Seaham (including
Seaham Colliery Pit Village) in 1871 was 10,370. It rose slightly to
11,017 by 1881. Consequently there was very little new development in
Seaham Harbour in that decade. Only one new street (Sophia) was
constructed. Summerson’s Buildings appeared though it may have been there
earlier under a different name. Co-author Tony Whitehead’s maternal
grandmother Elizabeth Robinson (nee Kelly) was born there in 1897.
Cornelia Street and Emily Street were finished off and only the tiny
George Street and York Place were yet to appear to complete the
‘Marlborough’ area.
TOP
9. Events 1881-1998
The 5th Marquess of Londonderry died in 1884
and was succeeded in his possessions and titles by his eldest son Charles
who thus became the 6th. Marquess of Londonderry and 3rd. Viscount Seaham.
On July 27 1886 he became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Viceroy) for an
agreed three year term of office and he and his family moved into
residences at Dublin Castle and Phoenix Park. He was the first member of
an Irish family to hold the position. In truth he was chosen because he
was the only candidate who could afford the office, which carried a small
wage and a large expenditure for hospitality. In 1888 he was awarded the
Garter for his services in that troubled island. His term ended on August
30 1889. A new row, Viceroy Street, was constructed at Seaham Colliery to
honour the office. A Viceroy Street was also erected in Seaham Harbour and
appeared in the 1891 census.
The population of Greater Seaham (including
Seaham Colliery Pit Village) expanded from 11,017 in 1881 to 14,204 in
1891. There was no obvious reason for this large increase. The surges in
the past had been caused by the opening and expansion of Seaham Harbour
and the coming on stream of Seaton/Seaham collieries but no such major
event took place anywhere in Greater Seaham in the decade 1881-91. There
was however much further housing development in Seaham Harbour during that
period - George Street, Adolphus Street West, Maria Street, Lord Street,
Viceroy Street and Herbert Terrace - all of them bearing Londonderry names
- appeared to fill in the few remaining gaps in the town. The decade also
saw the erection of Cliff House, the new Drill Hall, York Place and
Castlereagh Road. Only Frederick Street and the area between Ropery Walk
and Candlish Terrace were still to be built to complete old Seaham
Harbour. They would be developed in the following years.
The four remaining Rainton pits (Rainton
Meadows, Nicholson’s, Alexandrina and Lady Seaham) were closed down in
November 1896. With the loss of much of his income from central Durham in
1896 the 6th. Marquess decided to construct a second pit at Seaham as a
replacement. In August 1899 the first sods were cut by Theresa,
Marchioness of Londonderry, and her elder son Viscount Castlereagh, who
gave their names to the two shafts. The first coal was drawn in 1907. By
1911 the population of Seaham was 20,000 - an increase of 33% over the
previous ten years. By 1920 the new colliery, Dawdon, employed 3,300
workers and produced over 1 million tons per year. It became the premier
colliery in Greater Seaham, relegating the old 'Nack' to a poor second
place.
The 6th.Marquess of Londonderry died in 1915
and was succeeded by his only surviving son Charles, the 7th.Marquess. His
inheritance however was decimated by the newly-introduced death duties and
so the new lord of the manors of Dalden and Seaham was immmediately in
financial difficulty.The family would never truly recover from this blow
and have been in economic decline ever since.
Though miners were in a protected and vital
industry and theoretically exempt from conscription tens of thousands of
them volunteered and were accepted in the early days of the Great War when
it was thought ‘it will all be over by Christmas’. The Seaham Volunteers,
part of the Auxiliary Army, were among the first to be called up in 1914.
Co-author Tony Whitehead’s grandfather, Robert Whitehead, 32 year old
blacksmith’s striker at the new Dawdon Colliery, signed up at the Drill
Hall the day after the war began, despite the fact that he had a wife and
five children to look after and another one on the way. He was not alone
for it seems he had to fight his way through to the recruiting officer. He
ended up being gassed and barely survived the conflict. He was tortured
with lung pains and infections for the remaining 15 years of his short
life. He was lucky though for hundreds of Seaham men gave their lives in
that most pointless of confrontations. They are remembered on cenotaphs
and plaques in various clubs and churches.
The year 1918 saw both the end of the Great
War and the fourth and most dramatic of the Reform Acts. For the first
time all men over 21 and all women over 30 were enfranchised. Younger
women did not get the vote until 1928. Constituency boundaries were also
changed and a new seat called 'Seaham' came into existence, but the town
itself was only a small part of a largely rural constituency which
bordered with the seats of Houghton-le-Spring, Durham and Sedgefield. At
the General Election in December 1918 the Liberal Hayward defeated the
Labour candidate Lawson by 13,574 to 8,988. The election nationally was a
resounding success for the Coalition Government. 339 Coalition Unionists
and 136 Coalition Liberals were returned. Labour went up from 39 to 59
seats.The (Non-Coalition) Liberals got 26. In 1919 Labour gained control
of Durham County Council for the first time, under the chairmanship of one
Peter Lee.
Though he was back in the driving seat at
Dawdon and Seaham collieries once more after the Great War the
7th.Marquess actually had more pressing problems elsewhere for there was
still the small matter of his own solvency. Because of the death duties
payable on the estate of his late father he was now suffering acute
financial problems which needed urgent remedies. From 1917-30 he sold off
scores of minor properties in Seaham, the rest of the county and
elsewhere. In 1920 he sold Silksworth Colliery to Sir James Joicey. It was
decided that a new, third, pit should be sunk at Seaham and that the
contents of Seaham Hall should be disposed of preparatory to its sale.The
auction took place in May 1922 and the Hall then remained empty, but there
were no takers to buy it. In 1923 Londonderry offered it to Durham County
Council for use as a hospital. It was officially opened in February 1928
as a tuberculosis sanatorium.
In 1925 the 7th.Marquess gave 18.5 acres of
land to create Dawdon Welfare Grounds. In 1934 he gave Dawdon Dene Park to
Seaham Urban District Council. In the late twenties he sold off farmland
to the Council for the proposed Carr House Estate, later called Deneside.
The Londonderrys still owned the collieries and most of the land and
buildings in the town but otherwise their connection with Seaham had come
to an end after a century and four generations. The family still visited
Seaham on important occasions but they had become remote figures by the
1930s. They were still at the pinnacle of society however despite their
economic difficulties.
Ironically in view of what was to come James
Ramsay MacDonald was proposed as leader of the Labour party in 1922 by a
certain Emmanuel Shinwell and was duly elected. The new leader attended
the Miner’s Gala in 1923 at a time when industrial relations were on a
downward slope. On November 19 1923 the first sod was cut at the new
colliery which was called Vane Tempest after Frances Anne and her
ancestors. In that same month there was another General Election which
produced a combined Labour (191) & Liberal (159) majority of 92 over the
Conservatives who got 258, down 87. On 22 January 1924 James Ramsay
MacDonald became the first Labour Prime Minister of a Lib-Labour
government. Sidney Webb, first Labour MP for Seaham, became President of
the Board of Trade. The administration did not last long and Labour could
achieve little without a solid working majority. On October 8 1924 the
Conservatives joined with the Liberals to defeat Labour by 364 to 198. In
the General Election at the end of the month the Conservatives gained a
majority over the other two parties of 215. They secured 419 seats, up
161. Labour got 151, down 40. The Liberals strategy backfired horribly -
with just 40 seats (lost 119), they were virtually wiped out and would
never again even hope to be the sole party in power. They had been
replaced as the respectable party of the left by the Labour Party.
In January 1929 James Ramsay MacDonald was
adopted as prospective Labour candidate for Seaham where Sidney Webb had
decided to retire. MacDonald gave up Aberavon where there were excessive
demands on his time and pocket for Seaham where he would not be expected
to visit more than once a year and where the costs were met by local
people. Two months later, on May 30 1929, there was a General Election in
which Labour won 288 seats to the Tories 260. The Liberals again held the
balance with 59. James Ramsay MacDonald returned as Prime Minister of
another Lib-Lab government. He had a majority of 28,794 at Seaham where
the Liberal and Communist candidates lost their deposits.
The enormous economic crisis in 1931 split
the Labour party and led to the formation of a 'National' Government on
August 31. MacDonald, on the verge of a nervous breakdown and deserted by
most of his party, made an offer to the King to form an ad hoc government
to put through the financial legislation necessary and then dissolve for a
General Election. The offer was endorsed by Baldwin and by Samuel for the
Liberals. MacDonald remained as Prime Minister even though he could count
on only a handful of his party’s 287 MPs. On his insistence Labour had 4
of the 10 Cabinet seats. The Conservatives also had 4 and the Liberals 2.
Baldwin, as Lord President of the Council and titular head of government,
was one of the four Tories.
Shortly after MacDonald was expelled from
the Labour Party. The Seaham Labour Party asked him to resign his seat but
he refused and instead put himself forward as a 'National Labour’
candidate. The General Election was duly called for October 27 1931. Each
party issued its own manifesto with a general pronouncement from the Prime
Minister in his name alone. A Conservative landslide saw them win 473
seats. Together with their 'National Labour’ (13) and 'National Liberal’
(35) allies they had 521 seats in the new Commons. The Liberals got 33.
Official Labour got just 52 and all except one of their front-bench lost
their seats. The party would be impotent for the next 14 years. Ramsay
MacDonald retained Seaham with a majority of nearly 6,000 over Official
Labour, thanks mainly to the non-mining vote in rural parts of the
constituency. Had the vote been restricted to the town of Seaham and other
mining villages he would certainly have suffered the indignity of being
the only Prime Minister in history to lose his own seat. The official
Labour candidate was the local party secretary, A. Coxon, a Shotton
schoolmaster. MacDonald got 28,978 to Coxon’s 23,027. A new National
Government was formed a week later. MacDonald remained as PM but he was
now merely a puppet. Baldwin continued as Lord President and moved into 11
Downing Street from where he could keep an eye on 'his' PM.
Seaham Colliery was again mothballed from
August 1932 to April 1934 because of it’s heavy losses. All of the hewers
and some of the officials working in Dawdon’s Maudlin Seam were dismissed.
A total of 2600 men were paid off by Londonderry Collieries. The whole of
Dawdon colliery was closed for 4 weeks early in 1933 by a fire. In May
1935, sensing the worst and with an election apparently imminent, Ramsay
MacDonald retired as PM just before the Whitsun recess and swapped jobs
with Baldwin. The General Election finally took place on November 14 1935.
The Conservatives won 432, a majority of 247. Labour increased from 52 to
154. The Liberals fell from 33 to 20. Both of the MacDonalds, father and
son, lost their seats to Official Labour. This time the Seaham Labour
Party put in a real political heavyweight, a street-fighting Jewish
socialist, to oust the icon of the ‘National’ Government. Ramsay Macdonald
lost in Seaham to Emmanuel Shinwell by 38,380 to 17,882.
The Slum Clearance Act was passed in 1930
and Seaham Council was quick to take advantage. The Carr House Estate
(later renamed Deneside) had begun even before, in 1928, and was finally
completed in 1937. People from Seaham Harbour were moved up to it and away
from their old appalling conditions. The old tight-knit community at
Seaham Colliery was also broken up and moved almost en masse to the new
estate at Parkside. Knowing that Westlea and Eastlea estates were planned
a few of the inhabitants stayed put and waited for their new houses. 404
houses for 2,017 people were completed at Parkside by September 1940, but
there were no shops and no public house. Those billeted at Ash Crescent
complained bitterly about the continuous noise from the South Hetton
mineral line but eventually they became used to it and no more was heard
about the matter.
The old streets at Seaham Colliery and
Seaham Harbour were not immediately demolished but were kept for those
made homeless by German air raids. The Seaham created by the Founders was
beginning to disappear and this process was accelerated by the coming of
war with Germany. As an industrial town and significant railway hub Seaham
was an important target during the war. On the night of February 15-16
1941 four died at Seaham Harbour and Seaham Colliery. Eight months later
on October 25 1941 the Seaton Colliery Inn sustained a direct hit and the
landlady and a friend were killed. One day a new public house, aptly named
the Phoenix, would appear on the site. In 1947 construction of the Eastlea
and Westlea estates began. To make way for them the old streets of the
Seaham Colliery area were demolished over the next 15 years.
On January 1 1945 a new union, the NUM, was
created from the MFGB. A General Election was held in July 1945. Labour
achieved a landslide with 393 seats to the 213 of the Conservatives and
their allies, the Liberals 12 and Independents 22. For the first time a
Labour government had an overall majority and could put into effect some
of its ideals. Emmanuel Shinwell, MP for Seaham, became Minister of Fuel
and Power to carry out the pre-war dream of nationalisation. On July 12
1946, the eve of the first postwar Gala, the Coal Industry Nationalisation
Act received the Royal Assent. The official handover took place on
'Vesting' Day, Wednesday January 1 1947. Notice boards were set up outside
every pit which read: 'This colliery is now managed by the National Coal
Board on behalf of the people'. Lord Londonderry was apparently very
generously compensated for the loss of his three Seaham collieries but the
precise amount he received seems to be a secret.
On the evening of Saturday November 17 1962
Seaham was rudely thrust into the national spotlight when the lifeboat was
launched to help a fishing coble in distress in a rising and sudden gale
and with the thin late Autumn light already fading. Having successfully
rescued the occupants of the coble the lifeboat overturned in huge waves
just as it was about to re-enter the safety of the harbour. All of the
occupants of the lifeboat were lost and all too from the coble except for
one man, Donald Burrell, who managed to hang on to the propellor of the
lifeboat until it was beached and he was found. His 9 year old son David
and a brother were amongst those lost. This co-author was also 9 years old
at the time and the scenes from the next 24 hours are still clear in my
mind after 40 years. All night long helicopters and aeroplanes dropped
flares high over the coast lighting up the Seaham sky hoping to direct
rescuers to men in the water. By dawn no other survivors had been found
and bodies were gradually washed up over the next few days and weeks. One
body was never found. In my mind’s eye I can see the mountainous waves
smashing up over the lighthouse on the Sunday morning and every inch of
every Seaham cliff and beach was full of people vainly looking for signs
of life in those merciless seas. For a few days the Seaham Lifeboat
Disaster was high in the news and was then forgotten by all except those
Seahamites who lived through the drama. Donald Burrell could never forget
even after he moved away to a Nottinghamshire pit with his family. When he
died in the 1990s his ashes were sprinkled on the North Sea just outside
the piers.
At its peak in 1913 the Durham coalfield
produced 41.5 million tons with 165,246 employees at 304 pits. By 1934 the
output had fallen to 30.6 million tons produced by 107,873 employees at
228 pits. By the time of nationalisation in 1947 the number of pits had
dropped to 127. The three Seaham collieries, with their access to the
unlimited reserves under the North Sea, seemed to be safe for another
century and there were no alarm bells ringing yet on the Durham coast.
Between 1951 and 1964 the Conservatives closed 44 pits in the county. From
1964 to 1970 Labour shut down another 51. By 1970 a mere 34,484 employees
worked at just 34 pits. The closures were now coming ominously close to
Seaham and the writing was on the wall. By 1983 7.2 million tons were
being produced by 15,289 employees at 13 collieries.
TOP
The Miner’s Strike of 1984-85 - the last,
longest and most bitter of them all, was calculated to stop the closure of
the remainder, in Durham and elsewhere. Once again, as usual, the miners
lost and the fate of the rump Durham coalfield was finally sealed by
Conservative victories in the General Elections of 1987 and 1992. In 1987
British Coal 'amalgamated' Seaham Colliery with Vane Tempest. No more coal
was produced at the old mine and it was relegated to the role of a third
shaft for the newer colliery. Vane Tempest coal came to the surface at
Seaham Colliery and was transported to the main railway line or the docks
from there. The rail connection from Seaham Colliery to Seaham Harbour was
severed a year later in 1988 following an accident with a runaway
locomotive. Thus was closed the last section of the Rainton and Seaham
line laid between 1828 and 1831 which had brought life to the infant town.
'Benny’s Bank' had been a direct link back to the Industrial Revolution
and the Founders.
In 1991 both Dawdon and Murton collieries
were closed and the sites levelled. In October 1992 British Coal, as part
of a national strategy, announced the closure of the four remaining pits
in the old County of Durham, including the Seaham-Vane Tempest combine.
Seaham and Vane Tempest collieries were bulldozed in 1994. Now a great
open site has replaced each of the three Seaham pits. Mining in the town
came to an end after a century and a half.
Since the war a ring of satellite council
and private estates has sprung up to completely surround the original town
of Seaham Harbour. Westlea, Eastlea, Woodlands, Northlea etc. Parkside
received an extension and some shops at last. None of these new areas have
any connection with the Londonderry family and none have street names with
a Londonderry connection.
Glossary of
Place Names in the Censuses 1841-91
Dawdon Field House
Now known as Dawdon Hill Farm this structure
held 7 households in 1841 and had probably been there for decades and
maybe even centuries before that. It had an outstanding claim to being the
oldest continuously inhabited structure in Seaham Harbour and possibly in
Greater Seaham as well. Other outlying farms may predate it. Now seems to
have been abandoned in favour of a new dwelling alongside but this
co-author can remember it being inhabited as late as the 1980s.
Pilot Terrace
Originally intended only for pilots but that
superior and affluent breed soon decamped and left it to others.
Eventually it was dominated by bottlemakers.Though there were only 11
cottages as many as 36 households (1861) were recorded as living there.
Wood Houses
There is an entry for Wood Houses and/or
Wood Cottages in each of the censuses 1841 to 1891. The terms may have
been interchangeable. The first child born in the new town of Seaham
Harbour in 1828 was John Seaham Prudhoe whose parents lived in Wood
Cottages which were on Terrace Green opposite to the Lord Seaham. Also
living there was the Rogerson family. In the 1851 census both the Prudhoes
and the Rogersons were in ‘Marquess Cottages’ and Wood Cottages had
vanished. The two structures were probably one and the same. Wood/Marquess
Cottages were dismantled at some point in the next decade and moved to a
site just to the north of Pilot Terrace. They were not mentioned
thereafter and probably became known as Wood Houses. The Rogersons lived
in Wood Houses from 1861 to 1891 inclusive and probably moved at the same
time that the houses did.
Pottery
Seaham Pottery was mentioned only in the
1841 census though it is still marked on the wooden model of Seaham
Harbour (c.1861) which hangs on the rear wall of Seaham Library. Examples
of its produce can be inspected at Sunderland Museum.
Adolphus Street
Named after the 2nd. son of the 3rd.Marquess
of Londonderry and Lady Frances Anne Vane Tempest. There were 3 households
in 1841 and 68 houses by 1891.
Wood Cottages
See the above Wood Houses.
South Crescent
Four households in 1841 (including the Vane
Arms which was later regarded as being number 74 Church Street). Contained
the Londonderry Arms. Part of it still stands.
Back Street (Back South Railway Street)
The famous Irish Back Street. Numbered 1-37
in 1891, it had as many as 92 households in it in 1861. The great period
of Irish immigration to Seaham ended at about that time. The Irish
population of the street had become much diluted by 1881. Back South
Railway Street had several courtyards which each contained several
households. These seem to have confused successive enumerators so the
population of the street seems to fluctuate wildly. The enumerator almost
certainly confused many of the residents with other neighbouring streets
or vice versa.
Malcolm Square
Mentioned only in the 1841 census. Was
probably one of the courtyards of Back South Railway Street. A Malcolm’s
Yard appears in the 1861 census but this appears to be one of the yards of
Back North Railway Street - the other side of the Rainton line. I have no
idea who either Malcolm was.
Church Street
Eleven households in 1841, 74 houses by
1881.The church was not completed until 1840 so the street is not as old
as some others. For a long time development was mostly on the north side
of the street and even that had a large gap in it so that Kin(g)ley Hill
was still visible from Back South Railway Street. Church Street did not
become the main shopping thoroughfare until late in the 19th.century when
it replaced North Railway Street.
Cross Street
Contained 4 households in 1841 but then
vanishes. May have reappeared as Green Street in 1861.
South Terrace
Only one household in 1841, numbered 1-14 by
1891. Apparently had 41 households in it in 1871 but this may have been a
mistake by the enumerator. The surviving block includes the Engineer’s
Arms.
Dunn’s Buildings
Named after their first owner Ralph Dunn.
Were probably one of the backyards of Back South Railway Street. Later
they may have changed their name or merged with Back South Railway St.
Thornton’s Buildings
Were probably one of the backyards of Back
South Railway Street. Later they may have changed their name or merged
with BNRS. Named after their first owner Parkin Thornton whose gravestone
leans against the south wall of St.John’s Churchyard.
South Railway Street
Probably always had 34 houses but as many as
46 households had been registered as living there (1871). The Golden Lion,
Duke of Wellington and the Northumberland Arms (Inn-Between) survive in
1996.
Dawdon Hall
Mentioned only in the 1841 and 1851
censuses. Uninhabited thereafter. Had existed since mediaeval times.
Frances Street
Named after the Marchioness. Only one house
in 1841. Numbered 1-55 by 1891. Only one surviving house today - the
Volunteers Arms.
Dene House Farm
Mentioned in every census from 1841 to 1891.
The only structure in the projected new town in 1828. Eventually the farm
became completely surrounded by the town and the farmer had to travel
further and further to look after his diminishing fields. Demolished
1950s. Telephone exchange now stands on the site.
New Lodge
Exact location unknown.
Adam & Eve Inn
Originally called Garden House. Owned
throughout the 19th.century by the Fair family.
Tempest Place
Only one house in 1841, which vanishes in
1851. The street is resurrected by 1861 and seems to have had about 15
houses thereafter.
Baths
Mentioned in every census from 1841 to 1891.
Stood on the promontory overlooking Featherbed Rock.
‘Mill House’
Mentioned only in the 1841 census. I have not
been able to identify or locate this structure. Not to be confused with
the Mill House (site of modern-day upper Deneside) or the Mill Inn at New
Seaham.
North Terrace
Probably always had 29 houses but as many as
51 households were recorded there in 1841. Mary Ann Cotton, the alleged
mass murderess, lived at number 19 for 6 months in 1865. It is possible
that she murdered her 3 year old daughter Margaret Jane Mowbray there. The
current owner says that according to her grandmother Mary Ann actually
lived in a self-contained cottage to the rear of number 19 (which would
make it in Back North Terrace), a structure which has long gone as has the
rest of Back North Terrace. Much of the original North Terrace (circa
1828-31) still survives.
Prosser’s Opening
The connection between North Terrace and
Back North Terrace, next door to the Lord Seaham (Harbour View). The
passageway was a tunnel with several families living above it. Named after
its first owner, Thomas Prosser, landlord of the Lord Seaham (page 12) and
one of the four masons who built St. John’s.
Back North Terrace
Not a single survivor from this street. 57
households lived there in 1871.
John Street
Named after John Tempest, great grandfather
of Frances Anne. Long gone like the rest of the ‘Rectangle’.
Back North Railway Street
One of the first streets in the town. Was
probably finished by 1841 when it had 39 households. Once a busy
thoroughfare, only the Noah’s Ark (rear) survives today.
North Railway Street
Once a busy shopping street but now a quiet
backwater. The new supermarket partially revives the old flavour of the
street but of course the railway is long gone. Only the Noah’s Ark
survives today from what was.
Henry Street
Named after Henry Stewart, Lord Seaham, the
eldest son of the 3rd. Marquess and Lady Frances Anne. He became the
5th.Marquess in 1872. Henry Street had 27 households in 1841, 50 in 1851,
only 6 in 1861 and then 53 in 1871. It is not entirely clear where the
street vanishes to in 1861 but some of the residents may have been
confused with other streets. Another Henry Street stands on the site
today.
Dean Place
It is not clear where this street was. In
1841 it had 13 households, 20 in 1851, none in 1861, 1 in 1871 and then it
vanishes. It may have changed its name or become merged with an adjacent
street.
Bath Terrace
Advertised for tenants in the Durham
Chronicle when constructed in 1848. First appears in the 1851 census.
Still among the best blocks of houses in the town 145 years later.
Designed by the Newcastle architect Dobson who was also responsible for
Hawthorn Towers and many other notable places.
William Street
First appears in the 1851 census. Named after
Charles William Stewart, 3rd.Marquess of Londonderry. It probably always
had 33 houses but 48 households lived there in 1871.
Howey’s Yard
One of the backyards of John Street.
Mentioned only in 1851 when one of the residents was a Margaret Howey.
Toll Bar
The cottage which controlled the toll-bridge
across the dene in early days. Called different names in different
censuses.
Gas Works Cottages
Located in the dene near to Adam & Eve’s
Gardens. First appeared in the 1851 census. Survived until well into the
20th.century.
Blandford Place
Named after the Marquess of Blandford, heir
of the Duke of Marlborough, who married the eldest daughter of the
3rd.Marquess and Lady Frances Anne in 1843. Part of the original street
still stands. Had either 16 or 17 houses.
Adelaide Row
Named after the fourth and youngest daughter
of the 3rd.Marquess and Lady Frances Anne. Had either 24 or 25 houses.
Nothing survives of the original street. First appeared in 1851 census. A
year later Lady Adelaide eloped with her brother’s tutor, a humble
clergyman, and married him the same day. She was ignored by the family for
years for this act of marrying beneath herself and was only forgiven after
her father’s death in 1854.
Marquess Cottages
See Wood Cottages/Houses.
Infirmary
Apparently constructed in the 1840s but not
mentioned in the census until 1861. Mary Ann Cotton may have worked there
briefly in the summer of 1865. Later became Seaham Library. Demolished
1960s.
Sebastopol Terrace
Named after the town and battle in the
Crimean War. First appears in the 1861 census, five years after the end of
that conflict. Still stands intact.
Malcolm’s Yard
One of the backyards of Back North Railway
Street. Mentioned only in the 1861 census. No connection with the earlier
Malcolm Square (?).
Pattison’s Buildings
Mentioned only in the 1861 census (page 52).
Probably changed names. One of the aleged victims of Mary Ann Cotton, her
lover Joseph Nattress, was recorded there in 1861.
North John Street
This street had 27 households when it first
appeared in 1861, it was called Little John Street in 1871, reappears with
28 households in 1881 and vanishes in 1891 (probably merged with Back John
Street).
Lowrey’s Yard
Probably one of the yards of Back North
Terrace or John Street. Mentioned only in 1861.
Back William Street
Mentioned only in 1861 when it had 8
households.
Back Henry Street
Had 35 households in 1861, 19 in 1871, 7
houses in 1881 and then vanishes in 1891, probably confused with somewhere
else by the enumerators.
Vane Terrace
First appears 1861. Named after the
ancestors of Lady Frances Anne. Had either 13 or 14 houses of which two
still survive today.
Back Tempest Place
Mentioned only in the 1861 and 1871
censuses.
Police Station
First appears 1861. Served the town for over
a century. Demolished 1970s.
Thistle Cottage
Mentioned only in 1861 census (page 61).
Probably changed its name.
Londonderry Offices
Constucted 1857. Still stands as Seaham
Police HQ.
Colliery Station
The LS&SR was completed by 1855. Station
first mentioned in 1861 census.
Green Street
Named after Sam Green, manager of the LS&SR,
who was killed by one of his own trains in 1860. Still exists technically
but has no residents.
Back Church Street
Mentioned in 1861 and 1881 (when it was
called Back Cross Street by the enumerator).
Back Adelaide Row
Mentioned only in 1861 and 1871.
Marlborough Street
First mentioned in 1861 but clearly only
partly built by then. Long since demolished. Named after the above
mentioned Dukes of Marlborough.
New Cottages
Appeared first in 1861 census. Seems
initially to have been an umbrella term encompassing the later Swine Bank
Cottages, Fenwick’s Row, Candlish Terrace and possibly Ropery Walk as
well.
Timber Yard
Mentioned only in 1861 census.
Gamekeeper’s Cottage
First mentioned 1871. The game was probably
within the grounds of Seaham Hall.
Dene House
Residence of the Londonderry Agents. Still
stands.
North Battery
First appears 1871. Occupied by a regular
soldier employed by the Londonderrys to train the Volunteers.
Seaview Villas
First mentioned 1871. Still stand on North
Road next door to the Masonic Hall.
Seaham Harbour Vicarage
First mentioned 1871. Still stands though
replaced by an adjacent modern structure.
Rock House
First mentioned 1871.
Cornelia Street/Terrace
First mentioned in 1871 but was clearly only
half built. Called Cross Street in the 1881 census. Part of the street
still survives. Named after the wife of the 5th.Marquess.
York Villa
First mentioned 1871. Later became York
House club. Now Seaham Rugby Club.
Emily Street
A small street which first appears in 1871
with 2 houses and later expanded to 10.
Vane House
Named after the ancestors of Lady Frances
Anne. Demolished 1991 along with the rest of Dawdon Colliery. Originally
the home of John Watson, founder of Watson Town and the short-lived
Chemical Works.
Watson Town
Named after their founder who was the first
man to be buried in the new Princess Road Cemetery in 1885. Watson Town
was first mentioned in 1871 and was swept away to make room for Dawdon
Colliery at the turn of the century.
Bottlehouse Cottages
Probably originally classified as part of
New Cottages. Later became known as Candlish Row/Street/Terrace. Still
stands.
Fenwick Row
Named after the founder of the first
bottleworks in Seaham which was gobbled up by Candlish and merged with his
own concern. The Londonderry pub (the Parrot) stood on the seaward end.
One house still stands.
Ropery Walk
First mentioned 1871.
RC Parsonage
First mentioned 1871
Sophia Street
First mentioned 1881. Named after the
youngest daughter of the 3rd.Marquess and Lady Frances Anne.
White House Yard
First mentioned 1881. Probably the ‘Duck
Yard’.
Chemical Works
Mentioned only in 1881.
Summerson’s Buildings
Mentioned first in 1881 with 8 ‘buildings’.
Seems almost to vanish in 1891 but this co-author’s grandmother is known
to have been born there in 1897 and I have seen a birth certificate
mentioning the place as late as 1930.
Castlereagh Road
Appears first in 1891. All that remains are
the Castlereagh (Carlton) and the abandoned Co-op store.
Rainton line oppposite has been converted
into a small walkway.
Cliff House
Appears first in 1891.
York Place
Ditto. I have been unable to locate it on the
map of 1895 (Godfrey Edition). I suspect it
was the rear of the top house in Marlborough
Street which had Yorke Villa behind.
George Street
Appears first in 1891. Named after the
5th.Marquess who was George Henry Stewart.
Adolphus Street West
Appears first in 1891.
Maria Street.
Ditto. Named afterthe second daughter of
Lady Frances Anne and the 3rd.Marquess.
Lord Street
Appeared first in 1891. Named after Lord
Londonderry.
Viceroy Street
Named after the 6th.Marquess who was Viceroy
of Ireland from 1886 to 1889.
Herbert Terrace
Named after the brother of the 6th.Marquess.
Swine Bank Cottages (under that name),
Cemetery Lodge and ‘The Dene’ all appeared firstly in 1891.
As ‘New Cottages’ Swinebank Cottages were
there 30 years earlier.
Chapter 5, New Seaham
(Seaham Colliery)
Population changes in the 20th. Century
were:
Growth
of the Village of New Seaham 1861-91
|
1861 Census |
1871 Census |
1881 Census |
1891 Census |
|
West Row (23) |
School Row/Vane Terrace (25) |
Vane Terrace (23) |
Vane Terrace (23) |
|
Infant Row (6) |
Reading Room Row (6) |
Infant Row (7) |
Infant Street (7) |
|
California Row (68) |
California Row (68) |
California Street (68) |
California Street (68 |
|
Mount Pleasant (20) |
Mount Pleasant (20) |
Mount Pleasant (20) |
Mount Pleasant (58) |
|
Australia Row (82) |
Australia Row (66) |
Australia Street (66) |
Australia Street (66) |
|
Lononderry Engine Cottages (2) |
Londonderry Engine Cottages (2) |
Londonderry Engine Cottages (2) |
Londonderry Engine Cottages (2) |
|
Office Row (53) |
Office Row (37) |
William Street (30) |
William Street (30) |
|
Butcher’s Row (40) |
Butchers Row (39) |
Butcher Street (40) |
Butcher Street (40) |
|
German Row (22) |
German/Doctors Row (66) |
Doctor’s Street (66) |
Doctor’s Street (66) |
|
Bownden Row(23) |
Daker’s Row (21) |
Post Office Street (21) |
Post Office Street (21) |
|
Church Row (23) |
Church Row (25) |
Church Street (26) |
Church Street (57) |
|
Double Row (32) |
Double Row (32) |
School Street (32) |
School Street (32) |
|
Single Row(24) |
Railway Row (22) |
Bank Head Street (22) |
Bank Head Street (22) |
|
Model Row (35) |
Model Row (27) |
Model Street (26) |
Model Street (26) |
|
|
New or Cornish Row (57) |
Cornish Street (57) |
Cornish Street (57) |
|
|
|
Henry Street (59) |
Henry Street (59) |
|
|
|
Seaham Street (59) |
Seaham Street (59) |
|
|
|
Hall Street (50) |
Hall Street (50) |
|
|
|
Cooke Street (20) |
Cooke Street (20) |
|
|
|
|
Viceroy Street (61) |
The sinking of Seaton Colliery (the
High Pit) by the North Hetton and Grange Colliery Company began in 1844
and production of coal commenced in March 1852 after a long and desperate
struggle against flooding. The sinking of Seaham Colliery (the Low Pit) by
the 3rd. Marquess of Londonderry commenced in 1849 and it began production
not long after Seaton though the actual date is not recorded. The two pits
were amalgamated as Seaham Colliery under the control of the Londonderry
family in November 1864. There were no less than seven known explosions at
the pits, before and after amalgamation. There were three in one year at
Seaton in 1852, the first year of production, with six men and boys killed
in the last of these. One of the casualties was an 8 year old boy. Another
explosion at Seaton in 1862 burnt to death two more workers. The massive
explosion in October 1871 miraculously killed only 26. Even more
miraculously none died in the huge 1872 blast. Finally 164 men and boys
were killed in the calamity of September 1880. Though there were no
further explosions there were many single or multiple fatalities at Seaham
Colliery after 1880 - Seaham’s graveyards are littered with decaying
headstones which testify to that grim truth.
Seaham Colliery Pit Village (New
Seaham) was constructed from the mid 1840s onwards and was virtually
complete by the time of the 1880 disaster (see introductory chart).
Another street was built betweeen 1881 and 1891, called Viceroy Street in
honour of the office held by the 6th.Marquess of Londonderry from 1886 to
1889. A final small row, Stewart Street (the family name of the
Londonderrys), appeared between 1891 and 1895.
By the 1930s much of the housing at
Seaham Colliery, cheap and cheerless to begin with, was well past its best
and the village was earmarked for wholesale demolition under the Slum
Clearance Act. Parkside estate was constructed at the end of that decade
and most of the inhabitants transferred en masse to there in 1939/40.
Knowing that Westlea and Eastlea council estates were planned to arise on
the ruins of their village a few of the inhabitants decided to stay put
and wait for the new houses. When war came they were joined by those made
homeless in Seaham Harbour by German bombing. The Germans also managed to
hit the colliery village, scoring a direct hit on the Seaton Colliery Inn
after hours one night in October 1941 and killing the landlady and her
friend. Eventually the aptly-named Phoenix was constructed on the site.
The old pit village was finally
swept away between 1945 and 1960 but there are still a few remnants left
in 1995 (The Miner’s Hall bulding, the row of houses on Station Road which
incorporates the New Seaham Inn, now called The Kestrel). The village and
most of its inhabitants were gone by 1960 but Seaham Colliery itself
survived until the late 1980s. It was nationalised in 1947 after a century
of ownership by the Londonderry family. In 1987 Seaham was 'amalgamated'
with Vane Tempest Colliery and the old pit was relegated to the role of
being third and fourth shafts for the newer concern. No more coal was
produced at Seaham Colliery. The Seaham/Vane Tempest 'combine' was closed
by British Coal in 1994 and both sites were cleared. Now there is a great
open space where Seaham Colliery stood for 140 years.
History of New Seaham
The preparatory working for the
sinking of Seaton Colliery or the High Pit began on July 31 1844. The
actual sinking of the shaft commenced on August 12 1845. The mine was
developed not by the landowner Lord Londonderry but by the North Hetton
and Grange Colliery Company, on a site chosen because of its proximity to
the Rainton and Seaham waggonway. The main shareholder of this concern was
Lord Lambton, 2nd.Earl of Durham, an individual with many other inland
pits and who was the second largest producer of coal in County Durham
behind Londonderry himself. The North Hetton and Grange Colliery Company
was licensed to exploit only the coal under Londonderry’s land between
Seaton and Warden Law, but that canny lord reserved any and all seaward
coal for himself. The Marquess it seems was still very nervous about the
expense of sinking a new and very deep colliery and preferred others to
risk their money in what might yet prove to be a fruitless undertaking.
Also, as usual, he was short of cash despite the fact that business was
booming. Before very long he had his proof when the North Hetton and
Grange Colliery Company discovered deep but rich seams of coal.
Sir Ralph Milbanke, he who had sold
the estates of Seaham and Dalden to the Irishman for a song a quarter of a
century before, must have turned in his grave. Even before this
development Lord Londonderry was probably on paper the richest man in the
county of Durham. His numerous pits at Penshaw and in the Rainton and
Pittington districts and elsewhere in Durham were at their peak and the
demand was such that he could usually sell every ton that he produced.
Now, almost by accident, he had secured his family’s future for the next
century.
The nearby Mill Inn was known as
the 'Nicky Nack' and its landlord was dubbed 'Tommy Nicky-Nack Chilton'
and so Seaton Colliery soon acquired the nickname. Little is known about
these early years but a letter survives in the Londonderry Papers at the
Durham Record Office which informs us that on January 27 1845 a party of
guests travelled from Lord Londonderry’s mansion at Wynyard (near
Stockton, now owned by John Hall) to Seaham Harbour to observe the opening
ceremony for a new extension to the docks. On the way they passed the
digging at Seaton, where a depth of 40 fathoms had been achieved of an
anticipated 240 fathoms. At the request of the ladies present two of the
‘sinkers’ ascended from the bottom of the shaft in a large kibble or
bucket. They resembled drowned rats more than men but they maintained
their dignity and flatly refused to 'run about and show themselves' to the
spectators.
The pit later made much slower
progress due to the water problem. After coal was reached but before it
could be exploited a second colliery was begun nearby by the lord of the
manor. The reaction of the North Hetton and Grange Colliery Company
directors to this development has not been preserved but they cannot have
been very amused. Nearly thirty years after the first tapping of the
concealed coalfield at Hetton the 3rd. Marquess of Londonderry, now 71, at
last took the plunge and sank his first deep coal mine. The sinking of
Seaham Colliery or the 'Low Pit' commenced on April 13 1849. The Low Pit
shaft was 1797 feet deep and the High Pit shaft was 1819 feet deep. Both
were 14 feet in diameter. The new mines were the second and third deepest
in the country (behind Pemberton Main at Monkwearmouth). The first coal
from Seaton was only drawn on March 17 1852, after almost seven years of
battles against flooding and quicksand. Seaham began producing a little
later after a much shorter battle, but the precise date is unknown.
In the first weeks after coming on
stream there were three explosions at Seaton, the last of which, on
Wednesday June 16 1852, killed six men and boys and injured several
others. Among the dead was an 8 year old boy, Charles Halliday or
Holliday. The inquest was held at the Mill Inn with Mr. Morton, Agent of
the Earl of Durham, present. It was revealed that naked lights (candles)
had been used in the pit, nearly four decades after the invention of the
safety lamp. The jury recorded a verdict of accidental death.
To justify their huge outlay of
money the Londonderrys' new Seaham pit needed to be a giant in production
terms compared to its predecessors inland and this soon proved to be the
case. By 1854 (when it had barely begun production and would soon employ
far more) 269 hands were employed, making it as large as any of the
Rainton and Penshaw pits owned by Lord Londonderry. By the mid-1870s
Seaham/Seaton was producing as much coal as all of the other Londonderry
pits at Rainton, Pittington and Penshaw combined. By 1880 the mine
employed 1500 men and boys and had an output of half a million tons of
coal per year. By the time of the census of 1881 some 3,000 people lived
in the village of New Seaham.
Charles Stewart, 3rd.Marquess of
Londonderry and 1st.Viscount Seaham, died at his home, Holdernesse House
in London’s Park Lane, in March 1854. A new place of worship, Christ
Church, was built at New Seaham in 1855 by Lady Frances Anne as a memorial
to her husband. It is virtually the only monument to the old tyrant that
still stands in the town he created. The church received free heating and
lighting courtesy of underground pipes from the colliery 200 yards away.
Christ Church also included a graveyard which was to become the last
resting place for generations of New Seaham inhabitants. Previously the
dead had been interred at either the ancient St.Andrew’s at Dalton-le-Dale
or the even older St.Mary’s at Old Seaham or the new graveyard at
St.John’s in Seaham Harbour.
Like her late husband the
Marchioness was infamous for her parsimony and yet on March 1 1856 this
complex character entertained between three and four thousand of her
pitmen at Chilton Moor. In 1857 she spent over £1000 to entertain 3,930 of
her pitmen, dockers, quarrymen and railwaymen at Seaham Hall, in the
presence of the Bishop of Durham and numerous friends. Her friend and
protege Benjamin Disraeli recognised in his writings after her death that
Frances Anne was a tyrant in her way but it would be fairer to describe
her as a benevolent despot. As Durham mine owners went the Londonderrys
were actually among the best and the miners of the day preferred to work
for them than most others. Bad as they were living conditions at New
Seaham were far better than most older mining villages in the county. In
the 1850s the Marchioness built Londonderry schools at the Raintons,
Kelloe, Old Durham, Penshaw and New Seaham (which still stands) and later
her son Henry constructed another at Silksworth. She personally paid the
teacher’s salaries and all other expenses and allowed the children of
non-employees to attend.
The 1850s saw the building of
several streets in the vicinity of the two pits and the creation of a
tight-knit community. Window tax was abolished in 1851 and mechanised
brick production (with machine-pressed bricks) was developed in 1856, both
of which made the process cheaper and easier. The typical 'through terrace
house' at Seaton/Seaham Colliery had one room downstairs and one upstairs
(often divided into two by a partition to provide separate sleeping
accomodation for boys and girls). The downstairs room served for cooking,
bathing, meals, general living and as sleeping space for parents. The back
yard had a dry closet privy (a netty) and a coal shed. Social life centred
on the back alley. Some of the streets were built and owned by the North
Hetton and Grange Colliery Company, proprietors of Seaton Colliery. The
rest were constructed and owned by the Londonderry family, owners of
Seaham Colliery. At this distance in time it is difficult to tell who
owned what. The first streets, all of which were mentioned in the 1861
census, were:
West Row: which was later called School Row
and later still became Vane Terrace.
School Row: which is not to be confused with
School Street (see the below Double Row).
Infant Row: Very small. Only
six dwellings.
California Row: 1849 saw the
California Gold Rush.
Mount Pleasant : which may
have been named after a place in northern Ireland near the Londonderry
mansion at Mount Stewart or simply because it occupied a good vantage down
to the sea.
Australia Row: Australia was a
principal destination for British emigrants in this period, especially
miners from the northeast of England. Many of them promptly commemorated
their roots by naming their new communities after the ones they had left
behind. A Newcastle, a Sunderland, a Murton, a Ryhope and yes even a
Seaham, were created in New South Wales and survive to this day.
Office Row: which was later
called William Street.
Butcher’s Row: Butcher may
have been a director/official of the North Hetton and Grange Colliery
Company
German Row: later called
Doctor’s Street, which in the direction of Sunderland had a fine view of
the North Sea (The German Ocean.).
Bownden Row: later called
Daker’s Row and later still renamed Post Office Street. Bownden may have
been a director/official of the North Hetton and Grange Colliery Company.
Church Row: which faced the
new Christ Church
Double Row: later called
School Street
Single Row: later called
Railway Row, later still renamed Bank Head Street
Model Row: Presumably the
builders and owners were proud of this street and gave it a magnificent
title.Or maybe they had just run out of names !
At Hartley Colliery in
Northumberland in January 1862 over 200 men and boys died of suffocation
when the only shaft was blocked by falling machinery. Shortly after this
disaster, the greatest single loss of life in the Great Northern
Coalfield, the Seaton High Pit and Seaham Low Pit were joined by an
underground link. Within weeks, on March 29, a cage rope broke at the Low
Pit and the shaft was blocked by stone. Over 400 men and boys and 70
ponies escaped via the High Pit. They would have shared the fate of the
Hartley colliers and perished within hours without the connection. The
Northumberland and Durham Miner’s Permanent Relief Fund had its origin in
the widespread need which followed the Hartley Disaster. Before Hartley it
was the individual worker’s resposibility to subscribe to a 'club' to
cover 'private' medical expenses. There were discretionary payments from
the mineowners, at a level below that of wages, for some workers who
suffered an accident, with the limited objective of retaining the services
of skilled workmen temporarily disabled. For those permanently crippled or
worse there was nothing and before long they and/or their widows and
children were given their marching orders from their colliery houses. The
Employer’s Liability Act was still 20 years in the future.
Another explosion on April 6 1864 at
Seaton Colliery severely burnt two men, Tristram Heppell and William
Fairley. Both died in agony in their homes some days later.
Heppell’s father, a master sinker of pits, had been a contemporary and
friend of George Stephenson at Killingworth Colliery in Northumberland.
Heppell was a member of the Seaham Volunteers and so was given a military
funeral at St. Mary’s. Reverend Angus Bethune conducted the service. We
shall come across this individual again later in this narrative.
When an Act of Parliament prohibited
the working of coal-mines without two outlets from each seam Lady Frances
Anne decided that the simplest way to comply with this legislation in the
case of Seaham Colliery was to buy Seaton Colliery from the North Hetton
and Grange Colliery Company and amalgamate it with Seaham. This was done
in November 1864, and was virtually the last business deal she completed
for she was dying by then. She died at Seaham Hall on January 20 1865,
three days after her 65th.birthday. Her collieries passed to her son
Henry, Earl Vane, who succeeded his half-brother Frederick as Marquess of
Londonderry in 1872.
'Observer', who wrote 'Gleanings
from the Pit Villages' in 1866, gave Seaham Colliery high praise in
contrast to older Durham pit villages. He commended its roomy dwellings,
good gardens and wide streets. The usual outdoor meeting place for men at
Seaham Colliery in dispute with the management was the ball alley. This
was also used for gambling, fist-fights and games of hand-ball against
teams from neighbouring collieries. The surface of the wall eventually
deteriorated and it was abandoned to nesting birds in the 1920s.
As the North Hetton and Grange
Colliery Company no longer had an interest in the Seaton part of Seaham
Colliery or its housing stock any trace of that concern in the street
names of the village was now removed by the Londonderrys.
Uncharacteristically they did not bestow their own names as had happened
at Seaham Harbour and other places, at least not yet: West Row became
School Row and only later became Vane Terrace; Infant Row became Reading
Room Row; Bownden Row became Daker’s (the new manager of Seaham Colliery)
Row; Single Row became Railway Row. One new street appeared, predictably
being called New Row. By the time of the 1881 census it had become Cornish
Row in honour of the wave of immigrants coming in from that county.
All of the Easington district
collieries began to receive a steady stream of Cornishmen and Devonians
and their families in the mid-1860s. A street would be eventually be named
in honour of the Cornish at Seaham Colliery and a whole district of Murton
was taken over by these refugees from the dying lead and tin industries
and nicknamed ‘Cornwall’. Wingate Grange Colliery also received a very
large contingent. Seaham Colliery also absorbed Scots, Irish and Welsh and
also a group from Norfolk. Wood Dalling and neighbouring villages must
have been stripped bare of their agricultural labourers, lured north by
the prospect of higher and consistent wages by the agents of the Marquess
of Londonderry and other coalowners. Most of these people would retain
their accents for the rest of their lives but their children and
grandchildren were completely assimilated into the host community and
became Geordies. Seaham Colliery must have been a very cosmopolitan place
in these early days and it cannot have been unusual to hear a dozen
accents during a day’s work at the pit.
The mother and stepfather of the
alleged mass murderess Mary Ann Cotton moved to New Seaham from South
Hetton in the early 1860s. George and Margaret Stott took up residence in
California Street at an unknown number and in the summer of 1865 took in
Mary Ann’s only surviving child, Isabella Mowbray, aged 6. Mary Ann had
lost her husband William Mowbray to typhus in Hendon at the start of the
year and her other daughter Margaret Jane had succumbed to the same
disease at Seaham Harbour in May. Now Mary Ann needed time to sort herself
out and farmed her child out to its grandmother and step-grandfather. She
moved to Sunderland and got a job as a nurse at the Infirmary. There she
met a patient, George Ward, and married him before the year was out.
Mysteriously he was dead within months of a disease which apparently
baffled his doctors. At the end of 1866, within weeks of being widowed a
second time, she took a job at Pallion as housekeeper to a well-to-do
shipyard official James Robinson, who had just lost his own wife and badly
needed female help with his five children. The youngest of these, a sickly
infant boy, died within days of her arrival.
A few weeks later, in the spring of
1867 Mary Ann, a ‘nurse’ remember, was summoned back to New Seaham to look
after her mother who was dying of the liver disease hepatitis. Margaret
Stott expired within a week and was buried at New Seaham Christ Church.
Mary Ann then quarrelled with her stepfather over a few sheets she claimed
had been hers. He had never liked her much and now told her what he
thought of her and ordered her to leave his house and take her child with
her. George Stott already had eyes on a comely widow, Hannah Paley, who
lived in the same street, and he didn’t want the little girl around
cramping his style. He married Hannah Paley not long after but Mary Ann
was not invited to the wedding and in fact never came to Seaham again.
Within weeks of Mary Ann’s return to Pallion Isabella Mowbray was dead,
two more of Robinson’s children also, and the ‘housekeeper’ was pregnant
by her employer. George Stott did see his stepdaughter one more time. He
was her last visitor in the condemned cell at Durham Gaol in March 1873 a
few days before she was hanged for the murder of yet another child, a son
of her fourth (bigamous) husband Frederick Cotton. Her mother Margaret
Stott and her daughter Isabella Mowbray are included among the 21 people
that Mary Ann Cotton has been accused of murdering either for the
insurance money or because they were somehow in her way.
The first mass meeeting of the
lodges of the new union, the DMA (Durham Miners’ Association), took place
at Wharton Park in the city of Durham in July 1871. Just three months
later on Wednesday October 25 1871 26 men and boys were killed in another
explosion at Seaham Colliery. On the day before the tragedy a mass meeting
of young men and boys had determined to ask for some alteration in their
bonds - in particular a reduction in their hours of labour. For many below
the rank of hewer the working day lasted from their rising at 3am until
they returned home filthy at about 6.15pm. There was barely time for any
relaxation before going to bed. A deputation was sent to see the manager
Dakers but he refused to give them an answer until the next conclusion of
the bond in April 1872. Dakers refused even to see a second delegation.In
consequence a mass meeting of all the men and boys was called for the
Thursday night with a view to laying the pit idle. The disaster
intervened.
The explosion of Wednesday October
25 1871 occurred at 11.30 pm, otherwise the death-toll would have been
much higher - by now the colliery was employing 1100 men and boys. The
shock was felt at Seaham Harbour.John Clark, aged 9, sitting on the
surface in a cabin near the pit shaft, was blown 10 yards by the
explosion. The force of the blast was such that many ponies were killed in
their underground stables 1.5 miles away from the epicentre. Two men named
Hutchinson, father and son, working as 'marrows' (marras), fired the shot
which triggered the blast. The father, Thomas senior, survived the
explosion but was badly injured. For days he hovered between life and
death and medical opinion concluded that he could not survive. But survive
he did - for he was destined to be killed in the 1880 explosion. Thomas
Hutchinson junior left a pregnant widow and two children. Manager Dakers
and Head Viewer Vincent Corbett went down the pit to assess the situation
and made a decision which to some seemed harsh and to others seemed like
murder. The ‘stoppings’ were rushed up to starve the fire of oxygen and
save the mine irrespective of the men thereby entombed. The explosion
occurred on Wednesday - by Sunday the furnace was re-lighted at the shaft
bottom for ventilation. The men were somehow persuaded to return to work
while the bodies of their colleagues lay entombed for several weeks in
nearby workings. Religious decency then laid much greater emphasis on
proper burial of a body in consecrated ground. Four of the bodies were
brought out immediately after the explosion but the remaining 22 were not
recovered until December 20. The appeal fund produced just over £2,000.
The inquest was held at the New Seaham Inn (now called the Kestrel).
Verdict - Accidental death. Just as the village began to recover from the
tragedy it was struck another mortal blow with an outbreak of smallpox.
There was another explosion in 1872 but there was no loss of life or
injury. There were two mass funerals at Christ Church………..
21121871 John Hay, 60 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 James Aspden, 41[Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 John Richardson, 50
[Colliery Explosion 25101871]
21121871 George Barker, 16 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 William Dunn, 57 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 Thomas Bousfield, 49
[Colliery Explosion 25101871]
21121871 William Robins, 28 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 Edward Laing, 43 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 John Waddle, 52 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 George Shipley, 34 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
Burials from Christ Church
Registers [New Seaham]
21121871 Thomas Norris, 60 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
21121871 John Boadin [Burdon], 46
[Colliery Explosion 25101871]
21121871 Edward Campbell, 30
[Colliery Explosion 25101871]
21121871 Thomas Dobson, 13 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
22121871 William Young, 67 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
22121871 Thomas Proud, 58 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
22121871 David Ballantine, 69
[Colliery Explosion 25101871]
22121871 Thomas Tones, 64 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
22121871 William Coates, 30 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
22121871 Matthew Brown, 30 [Colliery
Explosion 25101871]
Note: There were four
other men killed in the explosion who were not buried at Christ Church,
Ralph Hepplewhite [St.Mary The Virgin], Thomas Hutchinson [St.Mary The
Virgin], Robert Straughair [St.John’s] and Charles Lawson [St.John’s]
Manager Dakers either retired, died
or moved on at the start of 1874. He was replaced by a 21 year old,
Mr.Thomas Henry Marshall Stratton, who was fated to be in charge when the
1880 disaster occurred. By then he was still only 28 and due to move on
from Seaham Colliery to his next post. The man had no luck. There was
another county-wide coal strike in 1879, the first major confrontation
since the the Great Strike of 1844 and, as usual, the miners were
defeated. Before the village of Seaham Colliery could properly recover
from this ruinous episode an even greater disaster struck in the following
year. The death of one collier started a train of events which led to an
immense tragedy. A man called Robert Guy was run over and killed by a set
of tubs on the Maudlin engine-plane at Seaham Colliery on August 7 1880.
Adverse and critical remarks made at the inquest a few days later obliged
manager Stratton to have refuge holes from the rolling tubs made larger
and more frequent to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy. This work went
on for several weeks and it may well have been a shot fired in the course
of it which triggered the great explosion.
In that hot August of 1880 the
Seaham Volunteer Artillery Brigade distinguished itself in the big gun
shooting of the National Artillery Competition at Shoeburyness, picking up
a beautiful trophy and over £200 in prize money, a very handsome sum in
those days. The team members were welcomed back to Seaham as heroes and
their crackshot Corporal Hindson was carried shoulder-high through the
town. The next big event in the town’s social calendar was Seaham’s Annual
Flower Show, to be held in the grounds of Seaham Hall from Thursday
September 9 to Sunday the 11th. The 5th.Marquess himself, a rather shy and
unassuming man, was to make one of his rare visits in order to present the
prizes. Indeed he was to honour the town his parents had founded with his
presence for an entire week. As it turned out he was to stay for a good
deal longer than he anticipated. Many of the miners at Seaham Colliery had
entries in the show and some of these men swapped shifts with those
disinterested in horticultural affairs in order that they might attend. It
was to prove a fateful decision for those who should have been working on
the Tuesday/Wednesday night and for those who ended up working when
ordinarily they would have been at home sound asleep.
At Seaham Colliery there were three
shifts per day for hewers (everyone else worked much longer hours) of 7
hours each, covering the period from 4 am to 11.30 pm. The shifts were: 1)
Fore Shift, 4 am to 11.30 am 2) Back Shift, 10 am to 5.30 pm 3) Night
Shift, 4 pm to 11.30 pm. Each shift involved some 500 men and boys and at
the overlap of the shifts there could be over 1,000 men in the pit. From
10 pm to 6 am, when the colliery was comparatively quiet, was the
maintenance shift, which employed far fewer workers. Fortuitously the 1880
explosion took place at 2.20 am during one such maintenance shift, 100
minutes before the start of the Fore shift, which is why only 231 men and
boys were below ground. The tragedy could have been much much worse,
eclipsing the disasters at Hartley and West Stanley.
On the fateful evening of Tuesday
September 7 1880 Joseph Birkbeck (or Birbeck), choir master and organist
at Christ Church, slept through his ‘knocker’ at his home at 19 Post
Office Street and thereby missed his shift and of course forfeited his
pay. The decision, conscious or otherwise, was to save his life and enable
him to live until his nineties. His father and namesake (17 Mount
Pleasant) was not so fortunate. Corporal Hindson (22 John Street, Seaham
Harbour), the crackshot, had a premonition of his own death. Three times
he started out for work on that dreadful night and twice he returned home.
The third time he did not return. John Hutchinson (15 Post Office Street)
went to work even though he was poorly because he knew the financial
result of any failure to attend. His condition deteriorated however and he
felt obliged to return home before the end of his shift. He abandoned his
place of work in the Maudlin seam minutes before the explosion, leaving
his marrow Pat Carroll (Cooke Street) alone, but had to sit down for a
rest on his way back to the pit shaft. He actually fell asleep and was
roughly awoken by the prodding of a stick by the overman Walter Murray who
told him to go home if he was unwell. At the shaft bottom Hutchinson
talked for a while with Laverick the onsetter whilst waiting for the cage
to descend. He had barely stepped from the cage at the surface when the
pit blew. The ground shook, waking up people in the neighbourhood. The
sound of the explosion was heard on ships in Seaham Harbour and as far
away as Murton Colliery and the outskirts of Sunderland. Some men saw a
great cloud of dust blown skywards out of the shafts. The Marquess heard
the noise at Seaham Hall and was among the first on the scene.
The explosion of Wednesday September
8 1880 took place at 2.20 am in the Hutton and Maudlin seams, the middle
of the three levels at the pit.The highest level was the Main Coal Seam,
the lowest was the Harvey. Both shafts were blocked with debris and it was
twelve hours before a descent could be made. Even then the rescuers had to
use the emergency kibble (an iron bucket) for the cages were of course out
of action. The cage remained out of action at the Low Pit for nine days.
In the pit the engine house and stables had caught fire and many of the
ponies were found to have suffocated. The hooves of some of them (complete
with shoes) were preserved as souvenirs, polished, inscribed and adapted
to various uses, such as stands for ink-wells, snuff-boxes and
pin-cushions. Fifty four ponies and a cat survived. Further on the
rescuers found debris and mutilated human corpses. Body after body was
then located in the dark tunnels. Nineteen survivors from the Main Coal
seam were brought up the Low Pit shaft which was not blocked at the level
of that seam. The main rescue work was done from the High Pit shaft where
it was also possible to use a kibble. Forty eight more survivors were
brought out this way. Of the 231 workers only 67 had thus been rescued by
midnight of the first day, leaving 164 unaccounted for. None of these
survived. Some 169 men and boys had been working in the affected seam -
only 5 of these survived and were rescued.
The roads into Seaham were
completely blocked by people in the next few days. Most of these were
simply morbid sight-seers who obstructed the way for the rescue teams
despatched from other collieries near and far. Special trains from
Sunderland to Seaham for the Flower Show (now cancelled) were instead
packed with these 'spectators'. The families of those dead or missing were
unable to get anywhere near the colliery. The crowd round the pit reached
an estimated 14,000 on the Wednesday night (the day of the explosion). By
Sunday there were an estimated 40,000 people in the vicinity to see the
first mass funerals. After that the interest wore off and the crowds
gradually drifted away to other entertainment. The bereaved were at last
left alone waiting for news, any news, of their loved ones.
164 men and boys were dead. The
flower of the village had been wiped out.There were 13 dead from Seaham
Street alone. California Street lost 12, Cornish Street 11, Australia and
Hall Streets 10 each. Every single street in the village lost at least 2
men or boys. Some of the bodies were recovered fairly quickly, the rest
only after long and painful delays. Fires had to be extinguished before
rescue work could continue. There was no artificial breathing apparatus
available though it had recently been perfected. 136 of the 164 bodies had
been recovered by October 1. Then the Maudlin seam caught fire again and
the management decided to seal off that portion of the mine to deny oxygen
to the flames, to the horror of the kinfolk of those entombed who still
clung to the faint and irrational hope that their loved ones were still
alive. The seam was not reopened until the following June when breathing
apparatus and Fleuss’s patent lamp were used by explorers. The last of the
bodies was not in fact recovered until almost exactly a year after the
explosion.
The workmen in those parts of the
pit over which the force and flame extended were all found dead at the
places where their work required them to be, as if death had been
instantaneous. But the miners far away from the shaft had lived on, some
badly injured or burnt and others unscathed, in small and remote air
pockets, for many hours or even longer, and left evidence of this in their
writings. They eventually died from suffocation in the depleting air. The
oil in some of their lamps was found to be exhausted, showing that they
had continued to burn for some hours, possibly days, after the explosion.
A note was found pinned to one of the bodies:
September 8 1880
'E.Hall and J.Lonsdale died at
half-past 3 in the morning.W.Murray and W.Morris and James Clarke visited
the rest on half-past nine in the morn and all living in the incline,
Yours truly,
W.Murray, Master-Shifter'
A piece of brattice-board about 2.5 feet long was
found with the names of fourmen on one side and on the other this message:
' Five o' clock, we have been praying to God'.
Near to the board were the four dead men. Another
board had two messages written on it in chalk.The first read:
'The Lord has been with us, we are all ready for
heaven - Ric Cole, half past 2 o' clock Thursday'.
The second message, much fainter, read:
'Bless the Lord we have had a jolly prayer
meeting, every man ready for glory. Praise the Lord’. Sign.R.Cole
Another man, Michael Smith, who had left his dying
infant son to go to work, wrote a love-letter to his wife on his tin
water-bottle with a rusty nail:
'Dear Margaret,
There was 40 of us altogether at
7am. Some was singing hymns but my thoughts was on my little Michael that
him and I would meet in heaven at the same time. Oh Dear wife, God save
you and the children, and pray for me...Dear wife, Farewell. My last
thoughts are about you and the children. Be sure and learn the children to
pray for me. Oh what an awful position we are in ! Michael Smith, 54 Henry
Street'
By a sad coincidence his son Michael
did die on the same day as the disaster. The bottle survives to this day
somewhere in the Midlands in the possession of a descendant of Michael
Smith.
Of the other victims John Southern
(or Sutherland, 12 Australia Street) left a widow and 9 children.
Crackshot Corporal Hindson (22 John Street, Seaham Harbour) was carried
shoulder-high again - this time in his coffin. His arms and legs were
blown off by the blast and identification was based on his flamboyant
beard. There was no Volunteers band at his funeral at St.John’s for it had
lost five of its best musicians. The Hendersons of 10 Cooke Street lost
the father Michael and three of his sons. Thomas Hutchinson (18 Seaham
Street), survivor in 1871, was not so lucky this time. The Durham
Chronicle reported: 'One of the first of the bodies recovered was claimed
by his widow to be that of Harry Ramsay (or Ramshaw). At home (20 Vane
Terrace) the pet dog refused to approach the corpse, barked ceaselessly
and was ill at ease. The body was duly buried. A few days later the real
Ramsay was found and positively identified by the army boots and straw
belt which he always wore at the pit. This time the dog showed every sign
of recognition and even licked one of the dead man’s boots....the
unfortunate widow had to pay for a second funeral and needed to be
advanced money for the purpose by Vicar Scott.’ The only thing wrong with
this story is that according to the 1881 census Harry Ramsey was a single
man living with his parents! Another enigma we shall never get to the
bottom of. The burial registers at Christ Church make grim reading………..
11091880 William Simpson, 31 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
11091880 James Brown, 55 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 William Spanton, 39 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Samuel Venner, 52 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 William Venner, 24 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Joseph Straughan, 21 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 John Thomas Patterson, 31 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
12091880 John Mason, 21 [Colliery Explosion 08091880]
12091880 Lees Ball Dixon, 26 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 William Wilkinson, 40 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 John Weirs [Weir], 47 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 John Neasham, 42 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Anthony Ramshaw, 65 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 James Dotchin [Dodgin], 62 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
12091880 Joseph Rollins [Rawlings], 49 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
12091880 Walter Dawson, 49 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Anthony Smith, 39 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Thomas Foster [Forster], 64 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
12091880 John McGuinness, 31 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Richard George, 31 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Thomas Alexander, 36 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 William Breeze, 33 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Thomas Lowdey, 48 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Robert Rollins [Rawlings], 39 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
12091880 Robert Potter, 47 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
12091880 Thomas Williams, 14 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
13091880 Joseph Chapman, 35 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
13091880 Michael Smith, 14 months (son of mentioned
Michael of Water Bottle fame)
18091880 John Short, 18 [Colliery Explosion 08091880]
18091880 Thomas Foster [Forster], 17 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
18091880 John Jackson, 61 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 Dominic Gibbon, 46 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 Robert Greenwell, 29 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 Robert Graham, 26 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 George Shields, 23 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 Michael Henderson, 22 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 Roger Henderson, 25 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
18091880 William Henderson, 19 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
19091880 Charles Horan, 28 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
20091880 Jacob Fletcher, 50 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
20091880 James Clark, 47 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
20091880 James [William] McLoughlin, 54 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
20091880 James Clarke [junior], 20 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
21091880 William Potts, 41 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Alexander Sanderson, 34 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Thomas Hays, 46 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Thomas Hays, 23 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Henry Ramsey, 33 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 George Roper, 50 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 John Riley, 70 [Colliery Explosion 08091880]
21091880 Michael Keenan, 50 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Charles Dawson, 37 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 William Fife, 44 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 George Page, 55 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 John Lock, 50 [Colliery Explosion 08091880]
21091880 George Hopper, 51 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Anthony Scarff, 40 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 George F.Lamb, 36 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Joseph Birkbeck, 64 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Robert Clarke, 71 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Robert Straughan, 17 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 George Henry Norris, 22 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 William Hood, 28 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 John Kirk, 67 [Colliery Explosion 08091880]
21091880 Robert Shields, 52 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 William Bell, 44 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Richard Driver [Drainer], 56 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
21091880 John Lonsdale, 27 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Mark Phillips, 22 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Anthony Greenbank, 27 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
21091880 Michael Henderson, 57 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
28091880 Edward [William] Hall, 61 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
29091880 Joseph Lonsdale, 48 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 William Wilkinson, 20 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 Joseph Clarke, 23 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 George Diston, 55 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 Thomas [John] Miller, 25 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 Thomas Grounds, 27 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 John Grounds, 19 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 John Dinning, 53 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 John Baty [Batey], 33 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29091880 William Sawey, 30 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 John Sutherland, 40 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Richard Defty, 28 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Edward Brown, 21 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 John George Roper, 25 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 John Potter, 43 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Joseph Lonsdale, 67 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 George Brown, 26 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 James Higginbottom, 62 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Robert Johnson, 34 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Robson Dawson, 34 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Isaac Ditchburn, 39 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Thomas Keenan, 37 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 William Berry, 26 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 George Brown, 62 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 Joseph Cook, 32 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
30091880 James Best, 51 [Colliery Explosion 08091880]
30091880 James Shields, 25 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
01101880 William Hancock, 19 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
01101880 Robert Dunn, 24 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
01101880 Thomas Roberts, 45 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
01101880 William Moore, 30 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
01101880 Michael Smith, 34 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
02101880 John Vickers, 52 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
and some 10 months later…………..
01081881 Thomas Cummings, 72 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
02081881 Joseph Pickles, 51 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
02081881 Joseph Cowey, 40 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
02081881 James Ovington, 49 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
03081881 Benjamin Ward, 35 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
03081881 John Spry, 53 [Colliery Explosion 08091880]
03081881 William Crossman, 18 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
03081881 Nathaniel Brown, 20 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
11081881 Joseph Theobald, 67 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
13081881 Henry Bleasdale alias Turnbull, 23 [Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
13081881 William Roxby, 25 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
13081881 Alfred Turner, 18 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
19081881 Joseph Waller, 16 [Seaham Harbour][Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
28081881 Edward Johnson, 39 [Seaham Harbour][Colliery
Explosion 08091880]
28081881 John Redshaw, 22 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
28081881 George Sharpe, 39 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
28081881 James Walker, 44 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
28081881 Henry Elsbury, 72 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
28081881 Samuel Wilkinson, 26 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
28081881 John Wilkinson, 20 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29081881 John Copeman, 32 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29081881 Thomas Wright, 26 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
29081881 James Johnson, 22 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
08091881 John Whitfield, 17 [Colliery Explosion
08091880]
Initially at least the Seaham
Colliery disaster excited national interest and sympathy. Queen Victoria
telegraphed from Balmoral, and the Home Secretary came to Seaham. As a
result of the explosion there were 107 widows, 2 mothers and 259 children
without their breadwinners. A Relief Fund raised over £13,000. The Queen
chipped in £100. It is not clear whether or not the Londonderry family
contributed to the sum. Probably they did not (at least not publicly) for
this would have created a dangerous precedent both for them and other
coalowners. In fairness it should be pointed out that the 5th.Marquess had
already contributed to the Northumberland & Durham Miner’s Permanent
Relief Fund over the previous three years a sum equal to one fifth of that
contributed by the workmen at Seaham and his other collieries. Londonderry
and his heir Castlereagh also had the decency to attend one of the mass
funerals. Had the disaster occurred just four months later, after the
passing of the Employer’s Liability Act (which became law on January 1
1881), then the widows and other dependents would have received at least
some compensation automatically if an inquest jury had decided there had
been negligence on the part of the proprietors.
Of the total sum of £13,000 raised,
£7,500 was invested with the River Wear Commisioners for ultimate needs,
and over £4,000 was paid to the committee of the Northumberland and Durham
Miner’s Permanent Relief Fund for them to administer by way of current
relief in Seaham. The inquest was held at the Londonderry Institute at
Seaham Harbour. Verdict - Accidental deaths. The locally-drawn jury might
have been afraid of upsetting the Londonderry family or their agents who
ran all of Seaham’s affairs and thus made no recommendations or remarks
regarding safety at the pit.
Then things changed. Typhoid fever,
possibly contracted from handling the bodies, broke out in the village by
the end of September. Yet more deaths were caused by this pestilence.
Bitterness was expressed when only 1 shilling (5p.) a week was granted to
disaster widows, plus 3 pence (1.25p) for each child of school age. Even
Vicar Scott protested. Ten of the widows felt compelled to march into a
meeting of the Permanent Relief Committee to state their grievances. They
asked for 2/9d (14p.) per week for each widow, 1/- (5p.) for each child
and a sum of £5 for each family to enable clothing to be bought. The
Committee remained unmoved and the rate of relief remained unchanged,
which is probably the reason why there apparently is still money in the
Fund to this day, 115 years later.
Greater bitterness was caused by the
decision to brick up the Maudlin seam before all the bodies were
recovered, because fires were still raging underground. Months passed and
the resentment led to riots and strikes. In November 1880 coal working was
being gradually resumed on the management’s promise of increased pay and
an undertaking that the Maudlin stoppings would soon be withdrawn but
early in December, when it became clear that these promises would not be
kept, the strike began in earnest. Despite the deteriorating weather the
workforce were still out at the end of January but a few, a very few, had
broken away. The DMA paid out 7/6d (37.5p) per week in strike pay. During
February the first blacklegs were brought in from outside the village and
were attacked. Daily and under police protection they had to run the
gauntlet of the miner’s wives, jeering and banging pokers on 'blazers'.
Any blackleg spotted on his own was given a good hiding. On more than one
occasion the strikers and their families massed at the pit and prevented a
particular shift from going down. More blacklegs were brought in under
cover of darkness. Spies in Sunderland somehow reported their imminent
arrival at Seaham Colliery station and there was usually a reception
committee waiting to give them a warm welcome. Eventually police had to be
billeted at the pit and these were put up in the Volunteer Drill Shed.
In February 1881 a special 'court'
was held at Seaham Police Station to deal with charges in connection with
the disturbances.The Reverend Angus Bethune was the presiding magistrate.
The other magistrates were Colonel Allison and Captain Ord. Colonel White,
Chief Constable of the County, also occupied a seat on the bench. Bethune
made all the decisions, primed no doubt by his ‘associates’. This far from
saintly individual, who now rests in St.Mary’s churchyard, was in fact
little more than a Londonderry family retainer. He lived into his 90s and
was one of Seaham’s leading citizens for 60 years, christening three
generations of Londonderrys (usually in London not Seaham). I leave it to
my readers to decide whether or not this was a kangaroo court. Watching
the entire proceedings (and taking copious notes for future reference no
doubt) were the new manager of Seaham Colliery, Barret, and his boss the
Head Viewer of all the Londonderry coal concerns Vincent Corbett. Over 50
men were summonsed. Five men were charged with assaulting an alleged
blackleg. For this offence one Simeon Vickers (8 Cornish Street) got two
months hard labour, the others (Thomas Morgan, William Aspden, Robert Dunn
and Thomas Lannigan) got 1 month hard labour. Vickers was further
convicted of an additional three assaults on other alleged blacklegs. He
got another three months hard labour for these incidents. Jonathan Wylde
was given 14 days hard labour for assault. A great mob of supporters
outside the closed court were held back by police. The constabulary were
also needed in force to enable the convicted to be escorted to Durham Gaol
the following day.
By the beginning of March the
strikers were at the end of their tether. A ballot was taken and there was
not the necessary two thirds majority to stay out. It was agreed that work
would be resumed on condition that all hands were re-engaged. However
Vincent Corbett, Supreme Londonderry Lackey in Seaham, was having none of
it. He named 26 'marked' men, above and beyond those jailed, who would not
be taken back on. These were of course the leading union men, intelligent
and therefore dangerous. In this tense stand-off, rumours proliferated
that candymen were to be sent for to commence evictions. On several
occasions in early March reports reached the village that their arrival
was imminent and mobs of men went to meet them. All of these however
proved to be false alarms. During the adjourned hearing of some of the
intimidation cases at the Police Station in April a crowd of miners left
the precincts of the court on hearing that a 'special' train was expected
at Seaham station containing both police and candymen. This report too was
unfounded. By the end of March 1881 the strikers were obliged to negotiate
with the management. The list of marked men was reduced to just 10, the
leading unionists.
The DMA had to advise the Seaham
Lodge to accept that the 10 men must become 'Sacrificed Members' who would
give up their colliery houses within a month. Four of these - Thomas Banks
(President of the Seaham Lodge), Thomas Brown, Thomas Burt (cousin of his
namesake, the Liberal MP for Morpeth) and Robert Newham stayed put in
their homes and were duly evicted on April 29 1881. The police arrived
suddenly and in force at 10 am. The rest of the villagers could only stand
in silence and watch. They were beaten and they knew it. The other
Sacrificed Members were given £50 each by the union to start up again
elsewhere. They would of course be denied work at every other mine in the
Great Northern Coalfield. Some of the men and their families left the
village. Some of these are reported to have been obliged to emigrate to
America. At least one of them, David Corkhill, eventually returned to
Seaham and his numerous descendants walk amongst us today, possibly
oblivious of the goings on of a century and more ago. See below for more
information about the Seaham Colliery Disaster.
Seaham Colliery finally got back to
work in April 1881. All of the remaining bodies were removed by September
6 of that year. Those widows who were now bereft of colliery workers in
their families were obliged to give up their houses and move elsewhere.
The village gradually filled up again as new workers were imported.
Fertile ground for Londonderry’s headhunters was found in the dying
Cumberland coalfield. A swarm of mining families came from the Whitehaven
area and there can be few Seaham residents in 1995 who do not have some of
these as their ancestors. Another wave came from the north Midlands -
Staffordshire and Derbyshire in particular. Some came from North Wales,
others from Yorkshire, Cornwall, Devon and Scandinavia. Nearer to home
Haswell and Usworth sent contingents too.
The 5th. Marquess of Londonderry
died in 1884 and was succeeded in his possessions and titles by his eldest
son Charles who thus became the 6th. Marquess of Londonderry and
3rd.Viscount Seaham. On July 27 1886 he became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
(Viceroy) for an agreed three year term of office and he and his family
moved into residences at Dublin Castle and Phoenix Park. He was the first
member of an Irish family to hold the position. In truth he was chosen
because he was the only candidate who could afford the office, which
carried a small wage and a large expenditure for hospitality. In 1888 he
was awarded the Garter for his services in that troubled island. His term
ended on August 30 1889. A new row, Viceroy Street, was constructed at
Seaham Colliery to honour the office. A Viceroy Street also appeared at
Seaham Harbour.
The four remaining Rainton pits (Rainton
Meadows, Nicholson’s, Alexandrina and Lady Seaham) were closed down in
November 1896. With the loss of much of his income from central Durham in
1896 the 6th.Marquess decided to construct a second pit at Seaham as a
replacement. In August 1899 the first sods were cut by Theresa,
Marchioness of Londonderry, and her elder son Viscount Castlereagh, who
gave their names to the two shafts. The first coal was drawn in 1907. By
1911 the population of Seaham was 20,000 - an increase of 33% over the
previous ten years. By 1920 the new colliery, Dawdon, employed 3,300
workers and produced over 1 million tons per year. It became the premier
colliery in Greater Seaham, relegating the old 'Nack' to a poor second
place.
The Slum Clearance Act was passed in
1930 and Seaham Council was quick to take advantage. The Carr House Estate
(Deneside) had begun even before, in 1928, and was finally completed in
1937. People from Seaham Harbour were moved up to it and away from their
old appalling conditions. The old tight-knit community at Seaham Colliery
was also broken up and moved almost en masse to the new estate at Parkside.
Knowing that Westlea and Eastlea estates were planned a few of the
inhabitants stayed put and waited for their new houses.404 houses for
2,017 people were completed at Parkside by September 1940, but there were
no shops and no public house.
The old streets at Seaham Colliery
and Seaham Harbour were not immediately demolished but were kept for those
made homeless by German air raids. On October 25 1941 the Seaton Colliery
Inn sustained a direct hit after hours and the landlady and a friend
(co-author Tony Whitehead’s great aunt) were killed. One day a new public
house, aptly named the Phoenix, would appear on the site. In 1947
construction of the Eastlea and Westlea estates began. To make way for
them the old streets of the Seaham Colliery area were demolished over the
next 15 years. The twin estates of Westlea and Eastlea, on either side of
the old A19, now stand on the site of Seaham Colliery village (‘The High
Colliery’). Many ex-miners or descendants of miners, live there today but
the nearest coalmine is over a hundred miles away.
Chapter 6, The Satellite Estates (Westlea, Eastlea, Northlea, Parkside)
-
Westlea
-
Eastlea
-
Northlea
-
Parkside
Chapter 7, The Churches
& Cemeteries
Anglicans:
St.Mary the Virgin [Old Seaham]
Baptisms since 1646
Marriages since 1652
Burials since 1653
St. Andrew [Dalton-le-Dale]
Baptisms since 1653
Marriages since 1653
Burials since 1653
St. John [Seaham Harbour]
Baptisms since 1845
Marriages since 1847
Burials 1841-1936, when graveyard closed.
Christ Church [New Seaham]
Baptisms since 1857
Marriages since 1861
Burials since 1860
Dawdon Mission Church
Baptisms 1911-12
St. Hild & St. Helen [Dawdon]
Baptisms since 1912
Marriage since 1912
No Burial Ground
Roman
Catholics:
St. Mary Magdalene [Seaham Harbour]
Baptisms since 1857
Marriages since 1871
No Burial Ground
St. Cuthbert [New Seaham]
Baptisms since 1934
Marriages since 1935
No Burial Ground
Methodists,
Baptisms:
New Seaham Primitive Methodist Circuit 1888-1919 &
1932-1942
Seaham Harbour Primitive Methodist Circuit 1889-1948
[inc.New Seaham 1919-1932]
Seaham Harbour United Methodist Free Church [Church
Street] 1864-1904
Cold Hesledon United Methodist Church 1893-1903
Seaham Harbour Free Methodist Chapel [Church Street]
1898-1911
Seaham Harbour & Cold Hesledon United Methodist
Churches 1924-1942
Seaham Harbour Bourne Methodist Church [Tempest Road]
1950-1960
Parkside Methodist Church, Seaham 1960-1968
Seaham Harbour United Methodist Church [Church
Street] 1950-1968
Seaham Colliery Wesleyan Methodist Church [Cornish
Street] 1870-1946
Seaham Harbour Wesleyan Methodist Church [Tempest
Place] 1876-1964
Stewart Street Methodist [Seaham Harbour] 1950-1969
Jubilee Methodist Church [New Seaham] 1944-1996
Cold Hesledon Methodist Church 1947-1966
Enfield Road Independent Methodist Church [New
Seaham] 1926-1999
Caroline Street Independent Methodist Church [Seaham
Harbour] 1914-1967
Stanley Street Independent Methodist Church [New
Seaham] 1968-1999
Methodists,
Marriages:
Seaham Harbour United Methodist Centenary Church
[Stewart Street] 1954-1968
Seaham Harbour United Methodist Free Church [Church
Street] 1950-1968
Seaham Harbour Primitive Methodist Chapel [Tempest
Road] 1912-1960
Seaham Wesleyan Methodist Church [Tempest Place]
1926-1955
Enfield Road Independent Methodist Church [New
Seaham] 1920-1998
Caroline Street Independent Methodist Church [Seaham
Harbour] 1939-1966
Stanley Street Independent Methodist Church [New
Seaham] 1968-1999
Parkside Methodist Church 1976-1996
Cold Hesledon [Stockton Road] Methodist Church
1946-1971
Salvationists:
Dedications (Baptisms) from the Salvation Army
Citadel [Seaham Harbour] 1980-2000
Marriages 1972-2000
Presbyterians:
Baptisms from Seaham Harbour Presbyterian Church [Adolphus Street]
1911-1945
Secular:
Burials from Princess Road Cemetery [Seaham Harbour]
since 1885
New cemetery at Seaham Lodge planned for c. 2005
