Seahouses is a large village on the North Northumberland coast in England. It is about north of

Alnwick Alnwick ( ) is a market town in Northumberland, England, of which it is the traditional county town. The population at the 2011 Census was 8,116. The town is on the south bank of the River Aln, south of Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Scottish bor ...

, within the Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Attraction

Seahouses attracts many visitors, mainly from the north east area. However national and international tourists often come to Seahouses whilst visiting the Northumberland National Park, Northumberland Coast and the Farne Islands. Seahouses also has a working fishing port, which also serves the tourist trade, being the embarkation point for visits to the Farne Islands. From shops in the town and booths along the harbour, several boat companies operate, offering various packages which may include ''inter alia'' landing on at least one Farne, seeing seals and seabirds, and hearing a commentary on the islands and the Grace Darling story or scuba diving on the many Farne Islands wrecks. Grace Darling's brother is buried in the cemetery at North Sunderland. He died in 1903, aged 84. The current Seahouses lifeboat bears the name ''Grace Darling''. The Seahouses Festival is an annual cultural event which began in 1999 as a small

sea shanty A sea shanty, chantey, or chanty () is a genre of traditional Folk music, folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large Merchant vessel, merchant Sailing ship, sailing vessels. The term ''shanty ...

festival. After a significant European funding grant from the Leader+ programme, in 2005, it has grown into a more broadly based cultural celebration. Kipperfactoryseahouses

There are claims that kippers were first created in Seahouses in the 1800s, and they are still produced locally to this day. Between 1898 and 1951, Seahouses was the north-eastern terminus of the

North Sunderland Railway The North Sunderland Railway was a railway line in Northumberland, England. It was opened in 1898, and ran from to , with an intermediate station at . Chathill was on the main line of the North Eastern Railway between Morpeth and Berwick. The bra ...

. Independent until its final closure, it formed a

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

rail link between the village and Chathill Station on the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

.Wright, 1988 The site of Seahouses station is now the town car park and the trackbed between village and North Sunderland is a public footpath.

Governance

Seahouses is within the civil parish of North Sunderland and the

Northumberland County Council Northumberland County Council is a unitary authority in North East England. The population of the non-metropolitan unitary authority at the 2011 census was 316,028. History It was formed in 1889 as the council for the administrative county of N ...

electoral division of Bamburgh, The parliamentary constituency is Berwick-upon-Tweed, represented by MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan ( Conservative).

Religion

Seahouses is in the Anglican archdeaconry of Lindisfarne, in the Diocese of Newcastle. It is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle.

References

Sources

* Wright, A., (1988), ''The North Sunderland Railway'', The Oakwood Press, Locomotion Papers No. 36,

External links