Lynemouth

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Lynemouth
Northumberland

Market Square, Lynemouth
Location
Grid reference: NZ295915
Location: 55°13’2"N, 1°32’7"W
Data
Population: 1,858  (2011)
Post town: Morpeth
Postcode: NE61
Local Government
Council: Northumberland
Parliamentary
constituency:
Wansbeck

Lynemouth is an old coal-mining village in Northumberland, three miles northeast of Ashington, and south-east of its fellow village, Ellington.

This is working Northumberland, not the picture-postcard countryside. To the south of the village are the Alcan Lynemouth Aluminium Smelter and Lynemouth Power Station.

On film, books and television

Lynemouth and the surrounding industrial area played an important role in the 1985 feature-length docudrama Seacoal about the seacoalers, who made a living from collecting waste coal from the beach.

The book In Flagrante (1988) by Chris Killip shows the work and life of the seacoalers here;[1] a greater number were published in 2011 in the book Seacoal.[2] In Flagrate won the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award.[3]

The village can also be seen in the 2000 film Billy Elliot. Lynemouth Cemetery doubles as Everington Cemetery, in which Elliot's mother is buried.[4] The colliery, which was demolished in 2005, can be seen in scenes filmed at the cemetery.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Lynemouth)

References

  1. Gerry Badger, Chris Killip (London: Phaidon, 2001; ISBN 0-7148-4028-9), pp. 72–89.
  2. Chris Killip, Seacoal (Göttingen: Steidl, 2011; ISBN 3-86930-256-9).
  3. "Chris Killip: Skinningrove: A film by Michael Almereyda", New York Review of Books, 22 July 2014
  4. "Dying for someone to take care of cemetery; Plea for landowners to clean up overgrown graveyard" - Evening Chronicle, 22 July 2008