Durham Heritage Coast wins UK Landscape of the Year Award

25th November 2010

Categories: Visitor News

Durham’s Heritage Coast has been voted the first-ever UK Landscape of the Year by the Landscape Institute, the professional body for landscape architecture.

The coastline, which stretches from Sunderland to Hartlepool, was once an industrial wasteland spoiled by more than a century of waste tipping from the coal mining industry.

Once known as “the black beaches” of Durham, it was sought after as a film location for directors seeking bleak backdrops, such as in cult gangster movie Get Carter in 1971 and Sci-Fi movie Alien 3, directed by Ridley Scott.

In the past ten years, the coast has been transformed and cleaned up since it was awarded Heritage Coast status in 2001. Thanks to the clean-up programme ‘Turning the Tide,’ managed by the Durham Heritage Coast Partnership, the coast is unrecognisable from its coal scarred past.

Ian McMillan, a poet and member of the judging panel, said: "This is an internationally important exemplar for transforming a despoiled landscape through careful and enormous amounts of enthusiasm."

The area is now attracting large numbers of visitors interested in its 13-mile coastal footpath from the town of Seaham to Crimdon.

Wild grasslands, flora and fauna have been reintroduced on the magnesian limestone cliff tops – the only ones of their kind in Europe – and the beaches have changed colour and been regenerated by the natural movements of the tide.

Visitors to the coast can also see one of the UK’s biggest colonies of little terns and during the summer catch sight of the rare brown Durham Argus Butterfly.

The coastal footpath is accessible year round and starts at Noses Point in Seaham which overlooks Blast Beach – once the site of heavy tipping and the fiery furnaces of a bottle works. Click here to find out more about the walk and download route directions.

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