Whitburn

The most dangerous coastline in the country

The waters off Whitburn, midway between the mouths of the Tyne and Wear, were once notorious: the submerged reef known as Whitburn Steel caused an average of over 40 shipwrecks for every mile of this coast, with 20 wrecks recorded in 1860 alone. Something had to be done, and in 1871 Trinity House provided the answer.

A world first

Souter Lighthouse, first lit on 11 January 1871, was the first lighthouse in the world specifically designed and built to run on electricity — a purpose-built alternating-current system years ahead of anything else in use anywhere, its carbon-arc beam powered by steam-driven generators that had themselves been shown off at the 1867 Paris Exhibition. It served for 117 years before being decommissioned in 1988 and passed to the National Trust, who still run its engine room, keeper's cottage and 23-metre tower as a visitor attraction today.

Marsden, the village that vanished

Immediately north of the lighthouse once stood Marsden, a purpose-built colliery village raised in the 1870s for the workers of Whitburn Colliery, which mined coal from seams running far out under the North Sea. At its peak, Marsden had 135 houses, a school, chapel, Co-op and its own railway, and was home to around 700 people. The colliery closed in 1968; within a few years the entire village was demolished and its residents rehoused nearby, leaving the clifftop grassland you see today with no visible trace that a community ever stood there at all.