Durham: Time and the Tides
With its beaches, rugged cliffs and imposing headlands, the Durham coastline is a dramatic landscape, stretching from Sunderland to Hartlepool in North East England. Today it's designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty owing to its Magnesian Limestone grasslands, wildflower meadows and ancient woodlands. But this coastline was once the site of several of Durham\u2019s last deep coal mines and notorious for its \u2018black beaches\u2019 and heavily polluted landscape. In the late 1900s, after the closure of the pits, it was transformed in a multi-agency clean-up to remove well over a million tonnes of colliery spoil which had been tipped onto the coast. Today it's \u201ca wonderful conglomeration of human and geological layers\u201d says archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby. Rose along with poets Katrina Porteus and Phoebe Power revisit this landscape which inspired a book of illustrated poems and prose as part of the National Trust\u2019s People\u2019s Landscape project which explores the role landscapes have played in social change. We hear from a former miner and a litter picker, discover beauty in an abandoned mattress, watch a butterfly through the lens of a child\u2019s camera, uncover a kaleidoscope of colours, catch up on memories of life working underground and wind-blow corn cockles above ground. \nProducer Sarah Blunt.
Further Information:\nPeople\u2019s Landscapes\nhttps://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/peoples-landscapes-explore-the-places-that-have-shaped-the-nation\nDurham Heritage Coast\nhttps://durhamheritagecoast.org/\nBeach Cleans \nhttps://durhamheritagecoast.org/our-coast/caring-for-our-coast/beach-cleans/\nSea Change\nhttps://www.guillemotpress.co.uk/poetry/katrina-porteous-and-phoebe-power-sea-change\nKatrina Porteus, Two Countries (2014)