IN the summer of 1965, someone in The Northern Echo’s photographic department acquired a panoramic lens and took it to the coast to try it out.
It produced what the photographer called “wide-eye” pictures which were reproduced in the paper to show how up-to-date The Northern Echo was.
Because these wide-eye prints are so large, they’ve got a bit battered around the edges, but still they capture the coast as it used to be.
Let’s start our seaside survey in Northumbria with a timeless view of Bamburgh castle (above). Ida the Flamebearer created a wooden stronghold on this rocky outcrop in the 6th Century and the Normans turned it into a proper stone castle to resolve any border conflicts.
During the Wars of the Roses, it became the first castle in England to be destroyed by gunfire, and since then, many brave people have sunk money into it to save it from dereliction. The most recent was William Armstrong, the Tyneside industrialist, who bought it in 1894 and sunk a million into it around the turn of the century.
Today, it is still owned by his family and looks much as it ever did.
The two gadgees in the flat caps on the edge of this August 1965 wide-eye picture will have seen many changes in the last 50 years as Seahouses has become the tourist resort of the Northumbrian coast. The three storey fishermen’s houses on the left have now become holiday homes with balconies hanging off their upper floors.
The harbour was built in 1889 for fishermen – Seahouses claims to be the birthplace of the kipper – but now it is better known as the “gateway to the Farnes” from where tourists get a boat across to the 15 to 28 islands (depending on the height of the tide) scattered a couple of miles out to sea.
The first Billy Shiel started taking visitors out to the Farne Islands in 1918 after the First World War, and from the 1930s outings on his traditional Northumbrian coble, Glad Tidings, became an essential part of the tourist experience.
Even the Queen Mother had a trip out, in July 1962.
The Queen Mother, clutching her handbag, takes a trip on Billy Shiel's Glad Tidings vessel from Seahouses harbour on July 2, 1962
The current Billy Shiel has eight boats called Glad Tidings, but the Farnes are currently closed until at least the end of this month due to bird flu.
One of the greatest coastal walks in the North East is the 1.3m across the cliffs from the village of Craster to the toothy remains of Dunstanburgh castle, which can be seen on the right in the distance of the picture. Like Bamburgh, it suffered grievously during the Wars of the Roses in the middle of the 15th Century, twice being captured by the Yorkists who left it in ruins.
“Craster,” said the photographer with the wide-eye lens in 1965, “with its tin rock-ribbed harbour, its tough fishing cobles and gallant fishermen, its craggy little gardens and its thrilling coastline, has its own charm for many.”
Although fishermen have pulled up their cobles between the outstretched fingers of rocks and onto the small beach at Craster forever, the harbour is fairly modern, built between 1905 and 1910.
It was built in memory of Captain John Charles Pulleine Craster who was killed in Tibet during an expedition in 1904 to keep the Russians out. The poorly equipped Tibetans – they wore magic amulets from the Dalai Lama which they thought would spare them from the British guns – were no match for the invaders, but Capt Craster was one of 202 British soldiers killed.
A plaque on its north pier says: “He took a deep interest in the provision of a harbour at Craster, and his brothers and sister chose this way of perpetuating his memory.”
Fishermen landed their herring, white fish and shellfish in the harbour, but it also in its early years was used for the export of stone quarried where the tourist car park is today.
Finally, a wide-eye of Whitby. These remarkable panoramic pictures have not been seen since they were first published in 1965 in a series in which the Echo showcased its photographer's new lens. "The yachts lie in orderly lines in the calm peace of Whitby harbour, where the wide-lens camera catches the full sweep of the quay at a quiet time," said the caption beneath the picture on October 9, 1965. It brings our photographic cruise down the east coast to an end, although there are a couple of places we need to return to in future weeks. In the meantime, if you have anything to add to any of today's pictures or seaside stories of your own, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
READ NEXT: A TOUR OF OUR WONDERFUL COAST IN VINTAGE RAILWAY POSTERS
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