Words and Memories

Easington beach was our summer escape from 1955 to 1970 ish. At first the stag from the pit came to the beach over the Flight. This was moving buckets which tipped the waste into the sea beneath the cliffs. The waste was stone and low grade coal and coal dust. Everything was black but there was still life in the sea, crabs, fish, anemones and weed. In the early 1970s, the coal was washed at the pit head and a slurry of stone dust and coal dust was emptied on to the beach. This slurry de oxygenated the waters and all life died. By 1975ish Easington beach was a dead wasteland. Shame on them.

Blackhall colliery also tipped waste into the sea but lots of us still caught good quality fish,crabs and lobster there the rock pools were alive with sea creatures in and around the rock pools at low water.

Interesting, I noticed, living in Blackhall that from around late 70s onwards, there did all of a sudden to be less wildlife washed up on the beach, sprats, starfish, crabs on the rocks etc, now its non existent.

I remember going to Hawthorn beach with my Dad as a small child in the late fourties early fifties to pick coal off the beach and carry it home in a sack , my father was a miner ,but obviously every little helped to keep his family warm xx

The Beach

They've pulled my teeth removed my braces

Taken away external traces

My face is clean, a pristine land

Can't quite disguise coal peppered sand

Remember days when dross would spew

And cover jewels of brilliant hue

Now ochre, grey and off white sands

Hide coal truck's deeply driven bands.

Fishermen there, children play too,

Listening to cries of gull and curlew

No longer hear the falling shale

No longer see a grounded whale.

You cleaned me up, or so you say

What of the life you took away

No Good News Week to bring to life

A working beach well used to strife.

I may be cleaner, but I'm sad

No longer see the working lad

When you go home and leave me here

The sea can't wash away my tear

The tear I shed for life gone by

For kites the kids flew in my sky

For fires beside a fishing pole

The miners' kids gave me my soul.

Ann Peel

Mr. Urwin asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what action he now proposes to take in order to prevent further despoilation of beaches by tipping of colliery waste material.

Mr. Peter Walker, "I have been very concerned about this problem. A Working Party of officials of the Departments concerned and of the National Coal Board has been set up to examine the financial implications of disposing offshore colliery waste at present being tipped on the Durham Coast. Further consideration will be given to the problem as soon as the Working Party has completed its task."

Mr. Urwin, "I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's concern, but does he realise that his answer will not be well received in areas such as that which I represent where this problem is very serious? As the tipping of colliery waste material has created and continues to create one of the gravest environmental problems in this country, is it not time that we had action instead of words, remembering that the Armistead Report was presented six years ago and that there have been discussions and conferences at the Department throughout this time? Things should be moving by this time."

Mr. Walker, "For part of those six years the hon. Gentleman was the Minister responsible for the North, and during that time there was not the examination made of this problem that I am now making."

Hansard, Beaches (Tipping Of Colliery Waste)Wednesday 24 November 1971

In 1981 the Commission on Energy and the Environment (CENE) published its report on coal and the environment(129), which recommended that spoil should not be tipped further on beaches, that the NCB ought not to undertake marine tipping unless and until suitable methods of safeguarding habitats and amenities are found, and that the ecological consequences of pipeline deposition to the seabed should be fully examined. Even earlier, in May 1974, the Minister for Planning and Local Government, Mr John Silkin MP, had announced that the Government, the NCB and the local authorities had concluded that tipping must be brought to an end and the beaches reclaimed(130). During the course of our study we visited one of the worst affected areas (south of Dawdon Colliery, County Durham) and we were shocked by what we saw (Plate 6). Beaches in the neighbourhood were also visited subsequently by the then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of the Environment, Mr Giles Shaw MP, who was reported in the local press as being appalled both at the scale of the problem and that such tipping was still practised. He announced that the Government, the NCB and local authorities had each agreed to contribute towards the cost of an experimental pipeline at Horden Colliery, which would take spoil some way out to sea and enable a full assessment to be made of the distance at which dispersal was adequate and the extent to which there were any adverse effects on the local marine environment. However, the Government's response to the CENE Report(131), while noting that the NCB had no plans to tip spoil on any new beaches and ideally would like to bring such tipping to an end, stated that the costs of doing so in the immediate future would be prohibitive.

1984 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

Mr. Dormand asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what action he proposes to take to stop the tipping of colliery waste on the foreshore of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Macfarlane "We have already taken steps to find a cost-effective and environmentally acceptable solution for spoil disposal from coastal collieries, and I am considering what further action is needed in the light of the tenth report of the Royal Commission on environmental pollution."

Mr. Dormand "Is the Minister aware that the 1981 report on coal and the environment and the report to which he has referred today condemned the tipping in the strongest possible terms and that both referred specifically to the north-east coast? Does he agree that it is essential that adequate financial assistance—certainly more than there is at present—be provided for this purpose? Why should the north-east suffer? Would the Minister sit idly by if the beaches of Bournemouth and Torquay were being destroyed?"

Mr. Macfarlane "The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. We have already taken some joint action, financed jointly by the NCB and local authorities. on an experimental pipeline at Hordern colliery. Some derelict land grant has already been spent on land reclamation in the hon. Gentleman's county of Durham but the problem is sufficiently difficult for me to wish to visit the hon. Gentleman's constituency to look at the area in some detail within the next six or seven weeks."

Hansard, 4 April 1984

I remember the waste dumped on Blast Beach and the sea coalers pushing their bikes laiden with sacks. Seeing these photographs, I never realised it stretched right round the coast. It was different back then, we didn't think about the environment like we do now.

Irene

I worked at Dawdon, we thought nothing of it, coal was king! There was nowhere else to dump it The beach was black and extended out to sea, when the pile got too high we just pushed it out to sea or along the beach. There was allsorts went on that beach, closing the mine brought it to an end. They might have saved the beach but they destroyed people's lives and the communities round here.

It's a different place today, I take the grandkids down on the beach. You can see the dolphins from Nose's Point, something I never saw when working there.

I grew up in Blackhall colliery about a mile from Blackhall rocks.

I remember when I was young going to the pit pony ponds, going through the mud to catch tadpoles.

Blackhall beach was slimy and black, we’d come back covered in an oily substance. We would leave bikes at top of the cliffs, you could do that back then. Would go down on the beach with a couple of sacks and collect coal. We would sell it for a pound a sack.

When I was young, I used to catch cod and coddling on the beach. Would lay a line anchored in the beach and walk back as the tide came in to stop the gulls stealing the bait then follow the tide back out to see if we caught anything. In 1984 I joined an angling club, there was very few fish, would catch fish at the Heugh in Hartlepool, but hardly anything at the collieries. Never saw any wildlife, not like now with dolphins and seals.

There was a fishing competition “the Big Un” There were thousands there. I only caught a codling, I didn’t weigh it in.

Mike Redshaw

At an event in August 2024 we asked for people's memories and feelings about the coast, the following are some of their responses...

Growing up, I remember how black the sand was.

The mines killed the beach, they tried to fix it by pumping the waste out to sea, but that killed the fish. I never thought the beach would ever recover.

Used to go get coal on the beach as a kid. Two sacks on my bike and push it up Dead Man's Hill.

How it Changed!

Watching the coal collectors on the beach.

Love my Coast!

I love this coastline. I'm glad to call it home.

Riding my bike down the east coast of County Durham.

Got a beach, but no job!