13 - South East Northumberland Coastal Plain : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The River Coquet to the north forms the boundary with the North Northumberland Coastal Plain. It also links the upstream National Character Areas (NCAs) of the Northumberland Sandstone Hills and Cheviot Fringe to the coast. The Northumbria coastal dune system stretches down from North Northumberland into this NCA as do the North Northumberland Heritage Coast and Northumbria Coast Special Protection Area (SPA) and Ramsar site.

Coastal sediment transfer along the coast is from north to south into the area from the North Northumberland Coastal Plain NCA. Wave action produces strong seasonal onshore and offshore sand movement while tidal currents reinforce the general southerly direction of sediment transport in the nearshore environment (Eastern Scottish Border to North Bank of the River Tyne Maritime Natural Area Profile, English Nature, 1998). Mid Northumberland lies to the west, linked by the easterly flow of the rivers Wansbeck and Blyth. To the south is the Tyne and Wear Lowlands NCA, providing a large potential market for food products, fuel and energy, and demand for recreational opportunities, particularly along the coast.

The South East Northumberland Coastal Plain today

The South East Northumberland Coastal Plain encompasses the low-lying plain of the Northumberland coalfield. Agricultural land use is evenly split between arable and grassland. Fields tend to be large, fences are frequent and hedges are often small and gappy, with few hedgerow trees. The plain is open, largely treeless and windswept. Broadleaved woodland cover, partly semi-natural, is a feature of the incised river valleys of the Blyth, Wansbeck and Seaton Burn. Blocks of mixed woodland are scattered within farmland and prominently top many former spoil heaps. Plantation woodlands and parkland trees are a feature of country estates such as Gosforth Park, Seaton Delaval and Blagdon.

The North Sea coast is low but varied, with expansive stretches of sandy beach backed by dunes and interspersed with small rocky peninsulas. Undeveloped areas support rare vegetation communities and important bird habitats, including mudflats and salt marshes along the estuaries of the major rivers. To the north, Druridge Bay forms a long sweep of sandy beach backed by mature sand dunes, lakes and wetlands. Druridge Bay is included in the North Northumberland Heritage Coast and Northumbria SPA and Ramsar site designations. Coquet Island is of particular importance for its breeding roseate terns as well as Arctic, common and Sandwich tern and puffin. Other important bird species on the coast include purple sandpiper, turnstone, eider duck, pink-footed goose and whooper swan. More than half of Northumbria’s fishing fleet operates from this stretch of coast, mostly from Amble and Blyth.

Inland, semi-natural habitats include fragments of lowland heath, grassland bog and fen, for example at Arcot Hall, Havannah Nature Reserve and Prestwick Carr. Extensive reedbeds are found at Gosforth Park Nature Reserve. There are many other small wetlands and ponds as a result in part of subsidence associated with mining. The area’s major rivers support otter, water vole and white-clawed crayfish. Farmland provides roosts and feeding for golden plover and grey partridge, and breeding sites for lapwing, tree sparrow, corn bunting and yellow wagtail. Areas of post-industrial land have developed significant value for wildlife with species-rich grassland and open mosaic habitats supporting species such as the dingy skipper butterfly.

In the south, the landscape is dominated by large-scale industry and the urban settlements of Blyth, Ashington, Bedlington and Cramlington, which spread along an extensive web of major roads and railway lines. The built environment provides important habitats for wildlife: gardens and allotments sheltering birds and small mammals, ponds offering refuges for amphibians, and buildings providing roosts for bats and nest sites for birds such as swift, swallow and house martin.

The landscape is much affected by a long history of both open cast and deep pit coal mining. Extensive reclamation works have partially erased the industrial history. Early restoration schemes resulted in large tracts of simplified agricultural landscape and plantations, but more recent schemes have created valuable wildlife habitats and recreational landscapes. The area has both active and planned large-scale open cast coal mines and has one of the highest densities of current and past coal mining activity in the country. Large-scale artificial structures, such as the bauxite hoppers at Blyth, pylons and wind turbines, are frequent features of the landscape.

The area has several popular locations for outdoor recreation, particularly the coast, country parks and stately homes and parklands, all of which are valuable and easily accessible assets for the large population in the south of the NCA. The series of 18 Local Nature Reserves provide important places for people to interact with and learn about nature close to where they live and work, as well as valuable habitats for local wildlife. The coast, especially around Druridge Bay, is very popular for watersports, walking, cycling, horse riding and birdwatching, with boat trips for Coquet Island leaving from the fishing town of Amble. Some ex-mining infrastructure has been converted for recreational use, such as wagon-ways which now form a valuable network of footpaths and cycle routes and restoration sites that are now used as country parks, for example Queen Elizabeth II Country Park.

The landscape through time

The area coincides closely with the limits of the Northumberland Coalfield and is underlain by Coal Measures (mudstones, sandstones and coal seams) of Upper Carboniferous age. The Coal Measures were deposited about 310 million years ago when tropical deltas existed in this part of the world. The coastline is of considerable geological and geomorphological interest and diversity. In the south, between Tynemouth and Lynemouth, cliffs and foreshore expose the most complete sequence of Carboniferous Westphalian rocks in the north east of England.

Boulders known as erratics, originating from the Cheviots, south-west Scotland and the Lake District, were left behind as the ice retreated after the last ice age. A thick layer of boulder clay and till was also deposited, burying pre-glacial valleys and leaving the flat till plain which characterises the present-day landscape. The land uplifted and rivers such as the Wansbeck and Blyth became deepened and incised. Tidal mud has been deposited, and salt marshes have developed along river estuaries. Wind-blown sand forms a long line of dunes along the coast, most notably at Druridge Bay.

The earliest evidence of human settlement in the area comes from Mesolithic sites along the coast, such as Hauxley and Newbiggin-by-the-Sea. Medieval settlement was largely nucleated and related to the arable cultivation of large, open fields across the relatively fertile soils of the coastal plain, with significant settlements at Warkworth, Newbiggin and Widdrington. The medieval layout of roads and building plots within settlements to the north (for example, Warkworth and Widdrington) remains, although border conflict resulted in the destruction and rebuilding of many settlements. Older buildings in the area tend to be built with the local sandstone, with more recent additions, such as the terraced mining villages, being made of brick. The defensive importance of this area against raids from the north is attested to by stone-built churches and defensive tower houses such as Warkworth Castle and Cresswell Tower.

Extensive reorganisation of the medieval landscape from the 17th century, driven by estates, resulted in intensive grain cultivation, cattle rearing and fattening, and dairy and sheep farming. The large, regular fields were reordered as production was centred around large farmsteads, many linked to coal-enriched country estates. During the 18th and 19th centuries there was widespread drainage of land for agriculture, which saw a dramatic reduction in grazing marshes, wetlands, natural streams and open water, and an increase in cultivated land. Along the coast, settlements developed around fishing, salt working and coastal trade.

Coal has been worked in this part of Northumberland since at least the early 13th century, from outcrops or seams on or near the ground surface. For many centuries coal was mined on a relatively small scale for local use, in shallow bell pits which peppered the landscape. During the 18th and 19th centuries, improved technology allowed deeper pits to open up the coalfield, greatly increasing coal production and making it one of the richest coal mining regions in the country. Coal was taken by direct rail and road links from the pitheads to the coast for export, and small fishing villages, such as Blyth, expanded rapidly to handle the new coal export trade.

The coal industry provided a tremendous stimulus to urban development and heavy industry, with the wealth generated by the mines being used to create a number of rural stately homes and designed parklands, such as Gosforth Park, High Gosforth, Seaton Delaval and Blagdon. Mines were accompanied by pithead buildings and new villages, which introduced elements of urban character (brick terraces with slate roofs) into rural landscapes, such as at Ashington. The expansion and growth of both industry and the local population continued throughout the 19th and until the mid 20th centuries, creating a landscape of widespread urban and industrial development. However, in the 1950s and 1960s the decline of deep mining was rapid, leaving a legacy of degraded land and spoil heaps. Many mining artefacts have now been dismantled, though exceptions remain such as Lynemouth pithead baths and Woodhorn Colliery. Many of the spoil heaps have been removed as part of the restoration process of open cast mining, but some remain as a legacy.

The First and Second World Wars left a legacy of defensive structures as the wide beaches were seen as possible invasion sites. Remains include pillboxes, searchlight bases, gun emplacements and long lines of anti-tank blocks. Notable among these are the hidden pillbox within the ruins of the medieval Low Chibburn Preceptory, Blyth Battery and the camouflaged ‘cottage’ pillbox at Hemscott Hill.

More recently, settlement and infrastructure pressure continues to transform the area around major towns and along stretches of the coast. The 1953 floods were a trigger to build sea defences in order to protect the area from seaflooding. The character of farmland has been enhanced through agrienvironment schemes, and restorations of former mining sites continue to mature. When Northumberland Heritage Coast was designated in 1973, Druridge Bay was excluded as it was felt that the ‘natural quality’ of the bay had been compromised to too great an extent by mining, heavy industry and associated development. However, by 1995 restoration of industrial sites had improved the landscape to such an extent that the coastline and dunes of Druridge Bay were included in the designation (Druridge Bay: A Strategy for Management to 2010, The Druridge Bay Partnership, 2006). Wind turbines are an increasingly common feature of the landscape: the first UK offshore wind farm was commissioned at Blyth in 2000.