DAY three of my March 2026 trip saw me return bright and early to Sunderland. Although in practice my brightness was slightly dimmed by the earliness, which was more extreme than originally planned. This last-minute change – or should that be first-minute? – allowed me to double back along the north bank of the River Wear and take several photos that my rain-soaked phone had been too sulky to manage the day before.
By the time that little errand was complete, the clock had ticked onwards to reach my planned start time. I was, for the moment, exactly on schedule…
Sunderland
St Peter’s Metro Station
Regardless of whatever time my phone claimed it might be, I reckoned it was Wearmouth Bridge o’clock.
Wearmouth Bridge
In one very real sense, Wearmouth Bridge did span across time, insofar as this particular incarnation of the bridge had been in situ for 99 years. It was built in 1927 to a design by the civil engineering consultancy Mott, Hay and Anderson (1902-1989).
It was actually the third bridge on the site, replacing an 1857 predecessor designed by Robert Stephenson (1803-1859), which had itself replaced the 1796 original.
Decorative Detail
As I moved along the bridge, my view downstream was interrupted by the pious exhortation of Sunderland’s motto: Nil desperandum, auspice Deo – ‘Do not despair, in God we trust.’
The device depicted in the shield is a sextant, which served as the borough’s unofficial arms from circa 1849, when the County Borough of Sunderland (est. 1836) assumed the design without authorisation, until 1949 when the College of Arms granted something more official.
Panns Bank
The southern end of Wearmouth Bridge abutted Panns Bank, the name of which betrayed its past as a centre for salt-panning, beginning in 1589.
Panns Bank may be named for the salt industry, but it was shipbuilding that came to dominate the area. Its shipyards and related businesses formed the commercial heart of Sunderland from the 16th century until the 1960s. And when I say ‘shipyards,’ that plural ‘s’ is doing a lot of work.
The first Sunderland shipyard actually pre-dated the Panns Bank boom by a couple of centuries, having been established by local merchant Thomas Menville in 1346. Others soon got in on the act but the industry really took off at the start of the 19th century, when the Napoleonic Wars increased the demand for new ships. By 1814 the number of shipyard facilities had surpassed 20; by 1840 there were 76 of them! Now, however, there are none.
SP Austin & Son
The Panns Bank mural was painted in 2014 by prolific local artist Frank Styles, more of whose works we will shortly encounter. Its subsequent deterioration was anticipated by the artist, who noted that:
‘It was designed to fade as I always knew it would, as there's water ingress through the wall.’
The mural depicts the facility of SP Austin & Son, which shipyard was established in 1826 by Peter Austin (1796-1863) but later became named for his son Samuel Peter Austin (1808-1867). The company occupied Panns Bank until 1954, when it merged with competitor William Pickersgill & Sons (est. 1838).
Austin & Pickersgill
Following the merger, the Panns Bank site became a repair yard, while shipbuilding operations were all moved to Pickersgill’s shipyard further upstream in Southwick. In 1964, the Panns Bank site was closed.
Austin & Pickersgill remained operational at its other sites until it was nationalised in 1977, becoming part of British Shipbuilders. Then, in 1986 as the wheel of political ideologies turned, it was privatised again as part of North East Shipbuilders Ltd (NESL). NESL proved a remarkably short-lived endeavour, however – it closed in 1988, taking with it Sunderland’s last remaining shipyard.
Panns Ferry Road
Frank Styles actually designed his mural to be looked at from Wearmouth Bridge, that being the angle from which its perspective works best so, by reaching the adjacent bank, I had basically failed at appreciating it. Fortunately, I didn’t yet know that as I continued merrily along my way, entirely happy with my experience. This carried me past the end of an access road which is now named as part of the road called Panns Bank, to which it connects, but back in the late 19th century was still called Panns Ferry Road.
Panns Ferry
Panns Ferry was, unsurprisingly, a ferry that used to cross the river before Wearmouth Bridge was built and so put it out of business. It was shown on John Rain’s 1790 Eye Plan of Sunderland and, though long gone by the time the Ordnance Survey compiled its 25-inch scale map in 1895, its access road’s name lingered on.
The ferry apparently carried both passengers and livestock, although it wasn’t supposed to convey the latter. This led to complaints being made by passengers on account of being ‘afraid of going in the boat when the horse was unruly,’ which sounds like a reasonable concern to me.
A small boat, nervous passengers and a horse that never chose to go a-boating and isn’t too pleased that it’s been forced to do not sound like the recipe for a fun time to be had by all.
St Peter’s Church
Personally, I looked north to St Peter’s Church from Panns Bank and cursed, albeit at my own stupidity. I had missed out visiting it the evening before on account of phone failure, intending to go back and include it in this morning’s pre-walk photography mission. Alas, I had somehow forgotten and it was too late to backtrack for it now. The photo above would be the best I would get.
St Peter’s admittedly isn’t much to look at. But that is because its 1876 Victorian restoration was surprisingly sympathetic to its history. While much of its structure dates to the 10th and 14th centuries, which is fairly impressive in itself, a part of the west wall and porch date back to the first church on this site, built in 674 for Benedict Biscop (c. 628-690) at the founding of the double-monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey. Even though Benedict brought in Frankish stonemasons and glassworkers to beautify his church, early mediaeval architecture does tend to look a bit plain.
Under Benedict’s successor as abbot, Ceolfrith (642-716), the abbey became home to a monk named Bede (673-735). He would go on to become a renowned author and scholar, dubbed ‘the Father of English History’ for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731.
Low Street
Beyond the former site of Panns Ferry, I made my way around the edge of Wear Dock and past Hart Court and Douglas Court, two University of Sunderland halls of residence that occupy part of the old Austin shipyard.
A little further on, I found my progress along the shoreline blocked by the Port of Sunderland, requiring a detour onto Low Street on the inshore side of the riverfront buildings.
High Street East
The docks ahead meant that Low Street was actually another dead end, which would convey to their gate. I thus needed to detour inshore again onto High Street East. There, I was greeted by more artwork by Frank Styles.
It’s only now, as I write this, that I realise this particular ‘High Street’ was ‘high’ in contrast to Low Street rather than meaning a main thoroughfare. That’s an interesting deviation from the norm.
South Dock Station
High Street East also ended at another entrance to the docks but this time there was another street – Barrack Street, so-named for exactly the reason that you’d expect – branching off to the side to describe the limit of Old Sunderland, the original parish that gives the modern city its name.
Barrack Street soon brought me to a T-junction with Prospect Row. Most of the latter headed south along the edge of some walled-in waste ground that was once the site of South Dock Station. This had been a goods depot opened in 1857 by the Durham & Sunderland Railway (D&SR) to serve the adjacent South Dock – itself opened in 1850 – and it remained open through various railway mergers until the mid-1990’s, when local coal mining finally ended.
A goods line into the dockside still survives. This was mothballed in 2002 but resurrected in 2025. At its reopening, port director Matthew Hunt noted that a single trainload was equivalent to 60 lorries on the roads as the first freight train in over two decades rolled south over the tracks.
Welcome Tavern
A tiny spur of Prospect Row extended northwards and, right at the corner of the junction, stood the Welcome Tavern, a rare survivor amongst the many pubs that once served the area but are now long-vanished. There has been a Welcome Tavern on the site since the 1830s, pre-dating the South Dock and its station, but the current building dates only from 1915. Mind you, that’s still over a century, so not bad.
Town Moor
Prospect Row is named for its view across the Town Moor and over the docks, out to sea. The moor is now basically a grassy park but was originally 80 acres of scrubby duneland granted to the freemen of Wearmouth in 1154 by the Bishop of Durham, Hugh de Puiset (1125-1195). Note that, in those times, County Durham was governed by the bishop much as the King’s barons governed other counties.
The Town Moor was used for a variety of purposes. Its rabbits were hunted for fur and food. It hosted fairs, horseraces, football matches and a distressing variety of blood sports including bull, bear and badger-baiting and cockfights.
The football matches were of the almost rules-free ‘mob football’ variety, with annual Shrove Tuesday football games causing general mayhem. In 1667, one of the players – Richard Watson – even died!
Holy Trinity Church
In 1719, Holy Trinity Church was built adjacent to the moor, using bricks made of clay dug from it. It is thought to have been designed by architect William Etty (1675-1734) of York.
Construction of the church spurred moves to better oversee and maintain the Town Moor that it stood next to (and was built from). Hedges and fences were cleared and adjoining streets of houses began to spring up overlooking it, such as Prospect Row.
Public use of the moor calmed somewhat also; the last horserace was held in 1732 and the blood sports were banned in 1835.
A1018
Signs for the England Coast Path (ECP), which I had hitherto been only vaguely following, directed me across the Town Moor and up Lawrence Street to a mini-roundabout, where I turned left onto Hendon Road. The latter was an urban main road with fairly heavy traffic, but made up for the downsides of that by presenting one of the upsides in the form of a corner shop. This enabled me to get myself suitably stocked up with water, snacks and a sandwich for later, should I not find a better alternative.
I followed Hendon Road, which was also the A1018, to the next roundabout where the A-route continued along Commercial Street. Hendon Road had varied from residential through commercial, tending toward industrial and Commercial Street seemed happy to continue developing this theme.
Eventually, the ECP directed me off the A-road and down a side-street that somehow managed to look even less inviting. I needn’t have worried, however, as its name – Promenade – might have given away had Sunderland City Council thought to bother with erecting road name signs.
Hendon Beach
The promenade ran alongside Hendon Beach, which is actually pleasantly sandy but I couldn’t see that because it was high tide and only the rip-rap protecting the sea wall was visible. Even so, I was absolutely delighted to be beside the sea again, especially compared to the A-road that I’d just left.
The ECP kept to the route of a foot and cycle path further up the coastal path from the actual promenade and I saw no reason to argue with it. My spirits soared, or possibly almost blew away (it was pretty gusty) as I joyfully ambled southwards towards Hendon Beach Car Park.
The car park is not particularly worthy of comment except that it had litter bins, and that made it an ideal spot to pause and eat some of my snacks. By which I really mean all of my snacks. And also my sandwich, because I have no willpower at all.
Ocean Road Level Crossing
From the car park, the ECP started off along its access road – which was an extension of Ocean Road – but then thought better of it and broke free to roam across Hendon Beach Cliffs.
It absolutely, definitely, didn’t keep heading inland, crossing the railway line to Sunderland Docks. And just as well, that was dangerous!
I took the above photo because you don’t see that many ungated level crossings these days, and the strangely archaic warning sign used for those makes me smile whenever I do.
Given that the actual danger is a Diesel-electric locomotive pulling 60-lorries worth of stuff, its practically misleading, but at least it’s charmingly so. It’s also slightly perplexing as these road signs were designed in 1965, when British Rail’s ‘dieselisation’ plan was well under way. One wonders what sign designer Margaret Calvert was thinking.
Hendon Beach Cliffs
The next two and a half miles or so were absolutely glorious and the blustery weather only added to the experience. For the most part, the ECP stuck resolutely, but not alarmingly, close to the cliff edge barring a couple of landward diversions to get around the mouths of Salterfen and Ryhope Village Denes.
Rhyope Village Dene is not to be confused with the larger Ryhope Dene, about three quarters of a mile further south. While all these ‘denes’ are gorges, the latter was a much more significant obstacle that forced the ECP to cut briefly inland to the B1287 road. This was not actually a bad thing, it would turn out, as it meant I saw the road sign that announced the council boundary.
Shifting Boundaries
Of course, historically, there wouldn’t have been a boundary there as Sunderland was part of County Durham, but when county councils became a thing in 1889, Sunderland was made a county borough –technically still part of the county, but independent from its county council.
Local government reforms in 1974 switched things up a bit, putting Sunderland in the newly created county of Tyne and Wear while adding some bits of the North Riding of Yorkshire to Durham.
Seaham
Seaham North Beach
Having crossed Ryhope Dean via the B1287 road bridge, the ECP returned me to the cliff edge for another two thirds of a mile. At the end of this, it dipped into another gorge at the seaward end of Hough Foot Plantation, only to climb straight back out again. The upper part of this ascent involved steps and was not too arduous but even so, I was pleased to espy the North Beach Coffee Bar at the top. A cup of tea and a bacon sandwich were very much called for!
Seaham Hall
Seaham’s North Beach is also known by the names Seaham Hall Beach and Glass Beach. The former of those two refers to nearby Seaham Hall, a country house built in 1791 for Sir Ralph Milbanke (1747-1825).
Sir Ralph’s daughter, Anne Isabella Milbanke (1792-1869) married the poet George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), 6th Baron Byron – better known simply as Lord Byron – at the house in 1815. They separated again after only a year, by which time they had a daughter – Ada Byron (1815-1852), who would grow up to become the Countess of Lovelace. An adept mathematician, Ada assisted Charles Babbage (1791-1871) with his Analytical Engine – a prototypical mechanical computer – devising the world’s first ever computer program in the process. Unfortunately, the engine was never completed, so the program could not actually be tested.
Seaham Hall is now a hotel and the room in which Lord and Lady Byron were married is called by them the Ada Lovelace Suite, despite her only link with it being indirect via her parents. I did wonder, for a moment, if she might have been conceived there but she was born eleven months after the wedding, so whatever they got up to on their wedding night, Ada was not the result.
Glass Beach
The other popular name for the beach, Glass Beach, comes on account of the surprising amount of sea glass that washes ashore. This is no natural phenomenon, however, except insofar as it is the effect of waves and tides upon glass that was dumped into the North Sea as rubbish.
Londonderry Bottle Works
The culprit was the Londonderry Bottle Works, which was founded in Seaham in 1853 by John Candlish (1816-1874), with patronage by Frederick Stewart (1805-1872), 4th Marquess of Londonderry (pronounced ‘London-dree’), who had, amongst various other estates, inherited Seaham Hall.
The bottle works operated from its founding until 1921 and, at its peak, produced 20,000 hand-blown bottles a day, exporting them all over the world. This rate of production was impressive, but there were inevitably rejects and these were disposed of simply by chucking them into the sea.
The bottle works are now a century past but their refuse, smoothed and rounded by the sea, still keeps returning to the shore.
The arms of the 4th Marquess of Londonderry quartered Stewart of Mount Stewart (a blue-and-silver bend counter-compony on gold, between two red lions) with a silver saltire on red, representing a Londonderry branch of Cowan.
5.5-Inch Artillery Gun
At the top of the inclined path that returned me to the cliff top, I found Seaham Masonic Centre (built 1874), opposite which, a WW2 5.5-inch artillery gun pointed out to sea. This was not, however, a prop for some arcane ritual but a memorial to the towns history of mounting an artillery defence.
An annoyingly ungrammatical information sign, liberally strewn with grocer’s apostrophes – or, as it would doubtless have stated, grocers apostrophe’s – recounted the history of the 2nd Durham (Seaham) Artillery Volunteers, a volunteer reserve unit raised in 1860 and manned mostly by local coal miners. The unit manned two coastal batteries and trained hard, winning many gunnery competitions against other, similar units.
All this is all and well, but the 1859 Volunteer Act that enabled it was repealed in 1908, so that unit had no actual connection to the gun, having disbanded three decades before the war that it came from.
Official Town Regiment
The gun was installed in 2023 in connection with the 4th Regiment Royal Artillery – the ‘North East Gunners’ – having been adopted as the town’s official regiment the year before.
I like that the British Army is maintain close links between its units and Britain’s communities, but the modern Royal Artillery has little to do with a WW2-era gun either. Not that they’re realistically going to park a modern self-propelled howitzer on Seaham seafront.
Lifeboat Disaster Memorial
Were the artillery gun operable, it could certainly add to the dangers of the North Sea, or at least those parts of it within 14.8 km of Seaham. But close to where it stood was a small, triangular memorial to remind us that the North Sea is plentily dangerous enough.
The memorial commemorates those lost in 1962 when the fishing coble Economy got into trouble in stormy seas. Launched to assist her was the Seaham lifeboat RNLB George Elmy. Both vessels had a crew of five.
George Elmy battled through dire conditions – Force 8 winds and 12-foot waves – to come alongside Economy and successfully take off her crew. The lifeboat then made it back to within 30 feet of the harbour entrance when successive waves striking her broadside caused her to capsize. Of the ten men aboard her, only one survived – a fisherman named Donald Burrell; the rest all drowned, frustratingly close to sanctuary.
The memorial was unveiled in 1994 and exhorts us to ‘remember the heroes,’ which seems fair enough.
Seaham Harbour
The harbour that they so nearly returned to was first built in 1831, the brain child of Charles Vane né Stewart (1778-1854), 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, who wanted a handy loading point for coal from his pits. That he picked a spot on a stormy, rocky coast seemed madness to many (and was a choice that would eventually have consequences for those named on the lifeboat memorial.)
There wasn’t yet a town at the spot that he picked, either, so he built that too, starting with 133 houses and no less than twelve pubs. The first of the latter was inevitably named the Londonderry Arms; but is now an Indian restaurant named Samrat.
The Londonderry arms in question were of course those of the 3rd marquess. He originally bore the same arms as his bottle-works-sponsoring son but his wife died in 1812 and he married again in 1819 to the heiress of the late Sir Henry Vane-Tempest (1771-1813). To reflect his wife’s inheritance, the marquess changed his surname and quartered the Vane arms – three gold gauntleted left hands on blue – with those of Stewart of Mount Stewart.
Tommy
A little further along Seaham’s seafront, I came to a statue that I instantly recognised as the work of sculptor Ray Lonsdale on account of being made from corten steel. This 2014 artwork depicted a British WW1 soldier sitting with downcast eyes immediately after the 1918 Armistice had ended the fighting.
This poignant monument is officially titled Eleven-O-One, but absolutely no one calls it that; it is known to all and sundry simply as Tommy.
Class Control
I stood and gazed upon Tommy for a melancholy moment until I started to get the strangest feeling that someone was standing right behind me. That someone turned out be thirty-odd someones, almost all of single-digit age. A primary school class was queueing politely behind me until it was their turn to look.
‘Wait for the gentleman,’ their teacher gently reminded them, but she hardly needed to have bothered. For one thing, I was already finished with my appreciation of the artwork. And, for another, they were already doing just that. They were remarkably well-behaved. Well-regimented, even.
I moved on to look at Seaham War Memorial.
Seaham War Memorial
Taking the form of a granite Celtic cross, Seaham’s war memorial was designed by Mr TA Lawson of Seaham Urban District Council and built by McMillan & Sons of Sunderland. It was unveiled in 1922 by Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1878-1949), the 7th Marquess of Londonderry.
The memorial cost £1,200 and lists 400 dead.
Londonderry Offices
Between the war memorial and the harbour, I passed an important-looking building that turned out to have been the offices for the Marquess of Londonderry’s businesses and estate. I was told this by a small blue plaque that misspelt his title as ‘marquis’ in the French style.
The offices were opened in 1857, which means it was the 4th marquess that had them constructed. From them, his collieries, railways and docks were administered and his other ventures overseen.
Today, the building is Seaham’s police station.
Londonderry Statue
The Londonderry offices might have been built by the 4th marquess, but it is his half-brother’s son, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1852-1915), the 6th marquess, who stands in front of it, immortalised in statue form.
Much like the war memorial, but far less economic, it was unveiled in 1922 by the 7th marquess, having been commissioned by him and his sister Helen, Countess of Ilchester to honour their late father. It was fashioned by Scottish sculptor John Tweed (1869-1933).
The statue has an engraving of the marquess’s arms on the rear of its plinth.
The 6th marquess’s arms retained the quarters for Stewart of Mount Stewart (1 & 4) and Vane (3) but included a quarter for Tempest (2). The latter comprised a black engrailed bend between six black martlets (stylised swifts), all on silver. His successors have all used the same arms.
MV Kristel
Opposite the harbour was an enormous Asda store, which furnished me with a cold drink and more water, both of which were definitely needed.
I rather took my life in my hands sprinting across the A182 and I paused to get my breath back before continuing. This provided an excellent reason to stop and examine the container ship MV Kristel, moored serenely in the harbour.
Kristel was built in the Netherlands in 1999, although she was then called Greta. She operated as an independent tramp trader (an unscheduled cargo ship, working on a contract-by-contract basis) until 2012, when her owners sold her on. Her purchasers renamed her New Constellation but otherwise continued in exactly the same vein until 2016, when they sold her to Estonian shipping firm Hansa Shipping (est. 1999), which has a fleet of 56 such ships. It was they who renamed her Kristel.
Kristel is 95 m in length, with a gross tonnage of 2,999 t and a maximum speed of 11 kts.
Nose’s Point
Immediately south of Seaham, the A182 turned right and headed inland, at which point the ECP broke free of it, taking the form of a broad, surfaced foot and cycle path. Alongside the seaward side of this ran a low wooden fence – essentially just a single railing – that served more as a warning than an actual barrier.
Dawdon Colliery
While taking a plummet off the cliffs at Nose’s Point was apparently not worthy of a warning in general, I could not say the same about landing in any pools below them. An actual, proper warning sign warned to me to:
‘Avoid contact with any water pooled in areas of mine waste on this beach.’
The site had been home to Dawdon Colliery between 1901 and 1991, which had been one of the most productive coal mines in the country at its height, employing close to four thousand miners. It extracted over a million tons of coal in 1925 alone, so you can imagine just how much not-coal it also dug out.
As if taking its cue from the bottle works, it simply tipped its spoil on the beach. It was not alone in doing this, either, leading to a phenomenon that was dubbed ‘Durham’s black beaches’ – far less pretty and more dangerous than sea glass. Efforts to remediate this problem between 1997 and 2002 were extensive but also incomplete, leaving ‘a small amount’ of waste in situ.
Dawdon’s Fossil Tree
This fossilised tree-trunk section is technically part of the mine waste, having been dug of the colliery while not actually being coal.
It appears to have been a club moss, a type of primitive plant whose modern surviving relatives are tiny, ground-hugging, semi-aquatic quillworts. This specimen is an example of the Sigillaria genus, which flourished around 320 million years ago and was neither tiny nor ground-hugging, towering tree-like to heights of up to 30 m.
Other Industries
Lingering as its presence is, Dawdon Colliery wasn’t the first industry to mar the beauty of Nose’s Point, having been preceded by the Watsontown Iron Works, which operated for about a quarter-century, from 1862 until 1888.
This is just the right timing and duration to miss showing up as extant on any OS maps. It was too late by a whisker for the 1861 1st edition, which shows a headland unspoiled except for one small quarry, and too late for the 1898 2nd ed, in which the site is depicted but marked ‘disused.’
The old quarry also persisted, disused, just landward of both ironworks and colliery and was used by the latter as a reservoir. Today, it is long gone, having been filled in, levelled and buried beneath Spectrum Business Park, a commercial and light industrial site and mostly comprises blocks of offices. The one obvious exception to this office rule is Castle Eden Brewery.
Castle Eden Brewery
Founded in 1826 by John Nimmo (c. 1801-1867), the brewery J Nimmo & Son had grown itself an empire of 123 pubs by 1963, when Whitbread (est. 1742) bought it for £2.3 m. In 2002, it returned to independence as Castle Eden Brewery through a management buyout following Whitbread’s plans to close it.
In what some might consider a shrewd move and others exploitative, Whitbread chose not to include the brewery’s main brand – Castle Eden Ale – in the sale. This forced the brewery to pay extra to licence the right to make the beer bearing its name.
Having become independent, Castle Eden Brewery closed its site in Castle Eden anyway and moved to Camerons Brewery in Hartlepool, which it had purchased from Wolverhampton & Dudley. Castle Eden Brewery was itself bought by new owners in 2014, who then moved it to Seaham. In 2025, it was acquired by Powder Monkey Group (est. 2023).
From 1951, J Nimmo & Sons used a red seven-pointed star as a trade mark but, prior to that, the company had used a Scottish Nimmo coat of arms featuring four gold cinquefoils upon a red saltire between four crescents. It started using the latter from at least the 1860s and registered it as a trade mark in 1877. Although the field of the arms was actually gold, it was rarely depicted as this on labels, signs and beermats, as that required the expense of another colour printing pass. Mostly, it was just left white.
Hawthorn & Easington
Blast Beach
Another pleasant clifftop stroll followed, now upon a much grassier path, which overlooked Blast Beach. This is the former ‘black beach’ the sign at Nose’s Point had warned me about, and gets its name from the industrial blast furnaces that once loomed above it on that headland.
Somewhere about half a mile inland was Kinley Hill Tower, a Grade II listed late 18th / early 19th-century folly built as a gazebo. This would no doubt have been lovely to see, but an annoying copse of trees conspired to block my sight of it.
The footpath led me south as far as Chourdon Point, where it suddenly turned inland as if heading for the disused Hawthorn Quarry (operational 1906-1993).
Hawthorn Quarry Bridge
Actually, crossing a line was exactly what the ECP was doing. Specifically, the Durham Coast Line, this part of which was opened by the North Eastern Railway (NER) in 1905 to straighten out an otherwise meandering route stitched together from several smaller railways.
The line features a number of spectacular viaducts, but Hawthorn Quarry Bridge, by which I crossed, was nothing to write home about.
Hawthorn Dene
Inland of the railway, the footpath was initially open but plunged into woodland as it approached Hawthorn Dene, another steep-sided gorge carved by glacial action. The railway crossed this on high via the Grade II listed Hawthorn Dene Viaduct but the ECP descended down the wooded valley slope to cross Hawthorn Burn by a narrow footbridge at the valley bottom.
I was pretty sure I was going to regret that route choice while ascending the far side but, as I approached the footbridge, I appreciated the path-planning decision for the excellent view it provided of the viaduct and its arches.
Hawthorn Hive
The climb back up involved quite a lot of steps, at the too of which I once again crossed the line, this time passing beneath it.
The embayment into which Hawthorn Burn empties is called Hawthorn Hive, where ‘hive’ comes from Old English hyþ meaning ‘landing place.’ The bay is bounded at its southern end by Hive Point and, having passed beneath the viaduct, I rounded that point and continued south.
Shippersea Bay
I next rounded the shallow embayment of Beacon Point Bay, bounded to the south by Beacon Point. Beyond that lay Shippersea Bay.
At Shippersea Bay, it’s theoretically possible to take a steep and vertiginous path known as ‘the Goat Track’ down to the beach below, but HM Coastguard strongly discourages anyone from doing so on account of its sheer drops and instability.
An alternative is to access it from Hawthorn Hive at low tide, which apparently reveals a sea glass-dotted beach embedded within which are the last remnants of West Hiker, a 1930s shipwreck that mostly, but not entirely, salvaged for scrap metal during WW2. Some caution is required if visiting Shippersea Bay by this route, however, as the tide can easily strand you, at which point the treacherous Goat Track is your only way out.
Easington Beach
This gloriously open and easy-going path hugged the cliff edge above Easington Beach, with minor lateral diversions for Busiers Holes and Fox Holes Dene, both of which lie ahead in the photo above.
Off to my right, inland of the path, was Easington Colliery, a former colliery village that once housed the miners who worked at Easington’s actual colliery.
Easington Colliery
Easington Colliery (the mine) opened in 1899 with sinking of its first pit and closed in 1993, six tantalising years from achieving a full century.
Almost perfectly and percussively dissecting this existence was Easington Colliery’s most significant mine disaster, during which an explosion caused by poor ventilation killed 81 men. A further two men, both rescuers, died from carbon monoxide poisoning during subsequent rescue attempts. Although the mine is now long gone, a memorial to this disaster still stands in the village.
The colliery’s closure devastated the local economy, resulting as it did in the loss of 1,400 jobs and the end of the area’s once-dominant industry. But, even so, the village continued and survived.
Horden & Blackhall
Horden
South of Easington Colliery was another former mining village, Horden, which between 1900 and 1987 hosted one of the country’s biggest mines. Although technically a separate village, Horden forms a continuous conurbation with the town of Peterlee immediately to its west. Not that I would actually visit either.
Horden Hall
As with Easington Colliery, it was the opening of the mine that prompted Horden to exist; prior to 1900 it was just open farmland overlooked by the 17th-century manor house Horden Hall.
The hall was built by Sir John Conyers (c. 1587-1664), whose 3 × great-grandfather, Richard Conyers had acquired the estate by marriage to heiress Elizabeth Claxton.
I. The Conyers baronets of Horden, of which Sir John was the first, bore arms displaying a golden maunch on a blue field. A maunch was a ladies’ detachable sleeve and became a badge of chivalric honour because ladies would detach them at jousts and give them to knights as marks of favour. II. The Claxtons of Old Park, who had held Horden before the Conyers, bore arms comprising a silver fess (central horizontal stripe) between three silver urchins (i.e., hedgehogs) upon a red field. They could have had lions or griffins or dragons but no, they went for hedgehogs. I rather like that.
Warren House Gill
From the clifftop, the footpath descended into Warren House Gill, which was another steep-sided valley.
Warren House, for which the gill is named, stood nearby at its upper end and featured on OS maps until at least the 1970s, but was demolished sometime since.
At the mouth of the gill was a stony ledge and beach, the ledge being composed of two metres’ depth of mine spoil. I paused there to look wistfully along that flat and easy-going coastline before taking the ECP’s preferred route of climbing a billionty-one steps of varying intactness.
I, of course was exiting the gill from the south, but I paused to read the poem anyway. It read:
Sanderling seeking butterflies spreading
A wind that carries memories of coal.
Horden Grasslands
Having passed between the butterfly wings, I found myself traversing the edge of the Horden Grasslands Nature Reserves, which were undergoing a £975 k project to restore lost coastal grassland habitats to the post-industrial terrain.
The project was drawing to a close when I walked through its edge back in March and was declared complete two months later in May.
Whiteside & Blackhills Gills
The path experimented a little with varied verticality, dipping into Whiteside Gill and Blackhills Gill in quick succession, which prompted some sharp words from me.
Little Tern
This Little Tern sculpture celebrates a colony of Little Terns which arrives from Africa each May, and remaining until autumn. It was designed by artist David Buurma and commissioned by Durham Heritage Coast Partnership, who installed it in 2010.
The partnership comprises several authorities and organisations including, but not limited to, the National Trust, Durham County Council, the local councils of Sunderland, Seaham and Hartlepool, Durham Wildlife Trust, Natural England and the Environment Agency.
Castle Eden Dene
In order to properly show its complete disregard for my complaints, the ECP next dropped into a really large dene, namely Castle Eden Dene, at the bottom of which flowed Castle Eden Burn.
Castle Eden Dene was both broader than the other Denes I’d variously crossed or diverted round, and also much longer, stretching inland by about three miles. Somewhere up by its head was the original site of the Castle Eden Brewery, not that I could see that from Dene Mouth.
Denemouth Viaduct
Denemouth Viaduct is 43 m high and comprises ten arches, each spanning 18.3 m. Like the viaduct at Hawthorn Dene, it was designed by William John Cudworth for the NER and opened in 1905. As constructed, it supported a timber pedestrian walkway on its downstream side, which formed the only direct route between Horden and Blackhall and must have been fairly vertiginous.
Use of the walkway reduced in 1926, when the A1086 road was built between those places, bridging the dene slightly further upstream, but it nonetheless remained in place until the 1950s.
Lowering Clouds (part I)
I happened to glance back north, just as I finished ascending the far side of Castle Eden Dene, and witnessed a dark and ponderous raincloud sweeping in from the sea across Easington Colliery.
The cliffs atop which I was so blithely strolling overlooked Blackhall Beach. This used to be one of Durham’s black beaches but has since been cleaned up. Evidence of its former state can be seen in the 1971 film Get Carter, in which the lead character (played by Michael Caine) is chased along it.
Blackhall Beach & Colliery
Inland of the path lay the former mining villages of Blackhall Colliery and Blackhall Rocks, whose pit (also called Blackhall Colliery) was operational between 1909 and 1981.
The villages and I remained separated from each other by the Durham Coast Line, even when a short detour around Blue House Gill forced me away from the shoreline.
The ‘blue house’ for which the gill is named, a farmhouse once called Hardwick Blue House, still exists within the village under the name Blue House Farm. Disappointingly, however, it is brown.
Crimdon Dene
At the end of Blackhall Beach, the cliff path passed above the actual rocks known as Blackhill Rocks and then edged its way around Cross Gill and Limekiln Gill. On the far side of the latter, it became suddenly flanked by caravans as the footpath entered the edge of Crimdon Dene Holiday Park.
The holiday park was first established as a camping site in 1946 and has since expanded so that its southern edge does actually now abut the dene for which it is named.
Crimdon Dene is, of course, a steep valley with a stream at the bottom, in this case Crimdon Beck. Both beck and dene (which sounds like the names of a celebrity couple) approach the shoreline from due west but then veer southwards at the last minute. Or last ten minutes, if you’re on foot, as the beck actually spills out over Crimdon Dene Beach half a mile from the edge of the holiday park.
Lowering Clouds (part II)
The cliffs gave way to dunes as I traversed this half mile and, as I looked out across them, I started to see unmistakeable signs that the weather was going to deteriorate.
I looked at the clouds, I looked at my map and I looked at the time. Then I looked at the path ahead. They all told the same story.
Hartlepool
Black & White Lies
At this point, I felt deceived by that sneaky, sneaky cloud that I’d seen earlier. And also by some animals near Blackhall Rocks that I had assumed must be cattle, but I’d clearly been misled:
While the old folk wisdom about the meteorologically predictive powers of cattle is actually just so much manure, those cows would hardly have been bothered anyway. They’re Belted Galloways from southwest Scotland and, if they had to sit down any time rain was imminent, their legs would atrophy away.
The ‘penguins’ were, of course, oystercatchers, hunting for oysters in their natural habitat – the course of Hartlepool Golf Club (est. 1906).
Cool Phenomena
It was while I was crossing the golf course that those lowering clouds swept in off the sea and proved my earlier assessment incorrect. I had thought that there was no possible way that I wouldn’t get rained on, but there was.
They were not rain clouds. They brought hail.
Hailbows are actually quite rare, so I felt privileged to see it. ‘Absolutely freezing, with exposed skin all stinging’ is how ‘privilege’ feels, right?
Steetley Pier
Partly to warm myself back up and partly because I thought I was closer to my destination (Hartlepool Railway Station) than I actually was, I quickened my pace as I strode along the path beside Hartlepool’s North Sands. This carried me quickly through a couple more fly-by bursts of hail towards Steetley Pier.
This 610 m pier was built in 1961 to pipe seawater to Steetley Magnesite Works. The works, which were first established in 1937, used the seawater in a process to treat locally-quarried dolomite to create magnesia for use in refractory bricks (i.e., heat-resistant ones). By the 1960s, the works had become the largest such plant in the world, hence needing to build the pier.
Alas, all things must come to an end and, after struggling through the 1990s and into the new millennium, the works closed down in 2005. This left the pier to moulder unmaintained, slowly falling apart and becoming increasingly unsafe. To avoid accidents, a section was removed in 2012 so that people (e.g., anglers) could no longer walk along it.
Headland Promenade
At the eastern end of the houses that occupy the old Magnesite Works, the ECP shifted back to the shoreline, passing in front of a cemetery and then some more houses before meeting the end of a concrete promenade. It seemed pretty clear that I had now entered Hartlepool proper and would soon be at the station, where I could stop and sit down. This pleased me for I was a little fatigued.
Fairy Cove Gun Battery
The promenade was broad and at a level intermediate between the street on one side and the crashing surf on the other. I soon found that I was not alone on it; scattered groups of others were also out taking a stroll.
The 4.5-in naval gun is of WW2 provenance but commemorates the location of one of three coastal defence batteries established in 1860 when the threat of a war with France loomed large. This particular battery was called Fairy Cove, while the others were Heugh (pronounced ‘yuf’) and Lighthouse.
The construction of Fairy Cove Battery was a new enhancement and reorganisation of existing defensive efforts, with cannon having been mounted on Hartlepool’s Headland since 1740. It remained in use until 1956, when the batteries were finally decommissioned.
1914 Naval Raid
During their years of operation, the Headland batteries were not just an idle precaution. In addition to providing anti-aircraft fire during WW2 they also proved their necessity and worth during WW1 when, in 1914, the Imperial German Navy bombarded Hartlepool.
The German battlecruisers SMS Seydlitz and Moltke and armoured cruiser SMS Blücher opened fire upon Hartlepool, killing 130 residents and wounding another 500. The Heugh and Lighthouse batteries were able to return fire with the 6-inch naval guns they then mounted, engaging in shore-to-ship combat that scored ten hits, killing nine German sailors and damaging the attackers’ masts plus Blücher’s bridge and three of her guns.
Heugh Lighthouse
The 1914 raid memorial stands directly landward of Heugh Lighthouse. Built from steel in 1927, the lighthouse is operated by PD Ports (est. 1840), which owns the Port of Hartlepool.
This is actually the second Heugh Lighthouse, the original having been built in 1847 – the first lighthouse in the world reliably lit by gas, apparently – and dismantled in 1915 after it had obstructed the batteries’ fields of fire while repelling the German raid (SMS Blücher hid from the guns in its lee after taking damage).
Between 1915 and 1927 a temporary wooden lighthouse was erected, which stood on stilts and looked a lot like Herd Groyne Lighthouse in South Shields. This stood on Hartlepool’s Town Moor.
Sebastopol Cannon
Close to Heugh Lighthouse stood an artillery piece that hadn’t fired on the German ships, though it very likely once shot at British, French and Turkish ones. It was a mid-19th-century cannon captured from the Russians in the 1854-55 Siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War (1853-1856).
After the war, it was gifted to Hartlepool Borough Council and arrived in Hartlepool in late 1858. Several such captured cannon were given to towns across Britain.
Headland War Memorial
Also close by was a memorial to both world wars and other conflicts in the form of Headland War Memorial. This comprised a Winged Victory perched atop a column in the centre of Redheugh Gardens, plus a memorial wall bearing the names of Hartlepool’s fallen on bronze panels.
The central column also bears decorative bronzes which show Hartlepool’s seal, the arms of the diocese of Durham, the arms of Bruce of Annandale – which family once held lands in Hartlepool – and a design featuring the original Heugh Lighthouse and the year 1914, referencing the German naval raid.
The memorial was designed by local artist Philip Bennison (1890-1924), who would himself die young, struck down by tuberculosis. It was unveiled in 1921 by John Lambton, 3rd Earl of Durham (1855-1928).
Heugh Breakwater
The sky was starting to turn an alarming shade of orange behind the drifting hail clouds as I reached the Heugh Breakwater (built 1853)and thus Hartlepool Bay. I now had at most half an hour of daylight in which to finish my walk.
Pilots’ Pier
Continuing round the Headland brought me to the Old or Pilots’ Pier, first constructed in 1473 and rebuilt in 1813.
A striped, wooden lighthouse stood at its end, looking like a fairly modern addition but actually dating to 1899, when it replaced an 1836 predecessor. Apart, that is, from the radar at its top; that was a smidgin more recent.
Town Wall
As I moved on past the Pilots’ Pier, I suddenly realised that what appeared, from its landward side, to be an unremarkable harbour wall was, in fact, a remnant of the old Town Wall erected in 1322 to ward off hostile Scots led by Robert the Bruce (1274-1329). Very little of the wall now survives, though what does is Grade I listed including the Sandwell Gate which is basically just an archway opening onto the shore.
I passed the aforementioned gate and immediately ran out of road, forcing me to turn right and inland. This put me onto the road called Northgate on account of it having passed through the Town Wall’s North Gate when that still existed.
I likewise passed through the site of the North Gate but was totally unaware that’s what I was doing. A short distance beyond it, I found a branch of Morrisons of which I very much was aware. I had planned to grab a coffee and a snack and have a leisurely rest on reaching the station and, now that I realised I wasn’t quite there yet, I wanted at least the snack part of that equation.
Carnegie Library
Ambling onwards, food in hand, I made it just 100 m further before stopping to look at a building whose purpose was to nourish minds not bodies. Specifically, it was a Carnegie Library, opened in 1903 and funded by the Scottish-American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919).
Today, anyone tempted to string up a simian would have to get their mind expanded at a different site, as the library moved out in 1999, relocating to the Borough Hall (built 1866). The Carnegie building then sat empty and forlorn for seven years, before being refurbished as council offices in 2006. Ironically, one of two departments based there is the council’s Libraries staff.
The library is Grade II listed, as is the Borough Hall.
Throston Engine House
Northgate edged its way around the northern limit of the docks for about another third of a mile before connecting with West View Road. There, looming high in the gathering gloom, was a windowless stone building that looked like it could have been either ecclesiastical or industrial, so long as the clergy or workforce didn’t mind being in the dark. This was Throston Engine House.
The engine house was built in 1840 to house a steam winding engine, which from 1841 hauled the wagons of the newly-established Stockton & Hartlepool Railway (SHR) up a 1.2 m incline to staithes at Victoria Dock. That might not sound very high, but’s a veritable mountain to a fully-laden goods train.
The engine’s use was short-lived, however, as the SHR fell out with the Hartlepool Dock & Railway Company (HD&R) over dock access fees and so built its own Coal Dock in 1847. The disused engine house subsequently became a water tower and then served as a water-softening plant during WW2. It now lies empty and derelict despite being Grade II listed.
A-roads by Night
West View Road morphed into Cleveland Road, also designated as the A1048, which was a fairly unexciting main road sandwiched between the docks and a residential estate. This, in turn, morphed into Marina Way, a dual carriageway doubling as the A179. The latter thankfully had a dedicated foot and cycle path, so I wasn’t dodging roaring traffic but it nonetheless made me appreciate Cleveland Road in way that I hadn’t while I walked it.
I followed Marina Way down to its end at the second of two large roundabouts, from which Hartlepool Station lay a mere 100 m distant. With great relief, I soon breezed into the station.
Begun, the Scone Wars Have
Not all that much later, I was back in my Newcastle hotel, where a shower and a sit down did me a power of good. And then, because eating was clearly the meme of the day, I went to find dinner and a drink. They didn’t take a lot of finding.
I also found, by idly glancing at other parts of the menu after having ordered, that my hotel took a surprisingly definite stance on the age-old dispute of how to eat scones and clotted cream. A short list of ‘dos and don’ts’ on their High Tea menu section was very clear that they should be eaten Devon-style (jam on top of cream) and not Cornish-style (cream on top of jam), which tells me two things: Firstly, they don’t see many visitors from Cornwall and, secondly, they’re very, very wrong.
I didn’t dare ask them how they’re pronouncing ‘scone.’
This time: 26 miles
Total since Gravesend: 4,809 miles
I remember “Tommy” at Seaham – brought tears to my eyes. This is the third Lonsdale sculpture I’ve come across on our wanderings. Love them……
I wasn’t entirely convinced by the Lonsdale sculptures at first, but I’ve slowly come around to like them.
I expected the focus to be Industry – I’m surprised at how much military history is still in evidence. Well done. 🙂
Thanks. And yeah, there’s definitely a military theme. Although it makes sense when you think about it that the coast facing onto the North Sea and thus looming European threats would have seen a lot of military activity, especially compared to the other side of the country.
You were in your element here. You know you’re in the NE when the “denes” start to appear. Some familiar sculptures and I remember exploring the symbolic broken pier.
My element being water, apparently, but only the frozen kind.