Family treasure on a Durhan Shore

Maggie B Dickinson is on a quest to trace the true tale behind a family memento, found on the shore many years ago. Let’s catch up with her, ‘at the coast’

I’ve come to Durham’s Heritage Coast on a mission that includes viewing Seaham Hall Beach, one of the world’s leading sea glass locations (and Countryfile’s 2019 Beach of the Year). Between the 1850s and 1921 the largest glass bottle factories in the UK operated on this coast. More than 150 years later rejects that were thrown into the ocean in their thousands are returned daily, fragmented and smoothed by the tides. Below me I see people who are bent double in the recognisable ‘sea glass stoop’ combing the tide line for a variety of shapes, colours and sizes of the prized glass which is often fashioned into unique jewellery.

Family history has brought me on a long journey to this cliff top; but not