Here you will find photographs of the model of the town of Seaham Harbour which was made, probably for Lady Londonderry in 1863 or 64, and measures about 8 feet by 4, it is currently displayed in Seaham Library.
In 1821 there were only 31 inhabitants of the area
which was to become Seaham Harbour, (the area covered by this model), by 1831 the population was 1022; 1841, 2017; 1851, 3538; 1861, 6137; and by 1864 around 8000.
When you consider that the population of the whole of Seaham is now only about 20,000, living conditions in these few teeming
streets must have been terrible. Gas if you were lucky, electricity over 60 years away, ash pits for toilets and one outside tap to supply water to several families and you understand why every street had several pubs and beer houses.
Only just over 30 years old the town was by now
growing at a remarkable rate, the docks were now handling as many as 100 ships a day and shipping out around 700,000 tons of coal a year.
The Candlish Bottleworks employed around 200 staff at this time which would rise until at its peak it employed more than 500 and produced 20 million
bottles a year.
Lord Londonderry’s widow, Frances Anne opened her Blast Furnaces in 1862 and in the late 1860s the huge 16 acre Chemical Works opened just south of the Bottleworks.
Already established were extensive Ironworks, railways, gasworks, sawmill and numerous smaller
industries not least of which were the several breweries in the town, the biggest being Chiltern’s Brewery behind the Braddyll Arms.
So here you have a snapshot of a youthful Seaham with a long way to go before the industrial decline in the 1920s.
Photographs by James Prior(
www.jimpriorphotography.co.uk )and David Angus with help from Brian Scollen, George Maitland and Brian Slee.
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