But I saw the sea once more in all the glories of surf and foam.The marriage was short-lived, producing as its only child the mathematician Ada Lovelace, but it was long enough to have been a drain on the Milbanke estate.

The area's fortunes changed when the Milbankes sold out in 1821 to the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry,[7] who built a harbour, in 1828, to facilitate transport of goods from locally encouraged industries (the first coal mine was begun in 1845).

As early as 1823, the 3rd Marquess had approached the architect John Dobson with a view to his drawing up plans for a town to be built around the harbour.

Seaham Colliery suffered an underground explosion in 1880 which resulted in the loss of over 160 lives,[12] including surface workers and rescuers.

Both senior teams play in the North East Premier League In the 2019-20 rugby season, Seaham RUFC were promoted from Durham/Northumberland 3 into Durham/Northumberland 2.

Both towns feature as locations in the film, notably Dawdon Miners' Club, into which Elliot's dad runs when he learns his son has won an audition at dance school.

[17] The town has also served as a location for the BAFTA nominated film Life For Ruth (1962) starring Janet Munro and Patrick McGoohan.

According to the Sunderland Echo (11 February 1999), scenes from Saving Private Ryan (1998) were also going to be filmed in Seaham, but government intervention moved production elsewhere.

According to Tom McNee's 1992 portrait of the town The Changing Face of Seaham: 1928–1992, St. John's parish church was used as the setting of a 1985 service recorded for BBC Radio 3.

For just over a hundred years the harbour was towered over by a 58 ft (18 m) lighthouse on Red Acre Point, immediately to the north, designed by William Chapman.

[21] The lighthouse was gas-lit, with an arrangement of third-order catadioptric lenses provided by Chance Brothers & Co.[20] It was decommissioned in 1905, when the harbour was expanded and the current black-and-white striped pier-head light was constructed.

[23] Between 1929 and 1935, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Seaham (the defunct constituency which covered the area now renamed Easington) was Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.

Terry Fenwick and Brian Marwood played for England, with the latter, on retirement from football, working as a commentator for Sky Sports.