My Blog List

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Some Well Travelled Sea Coal

Last night on BBC2, there was a show called "Why Did The Industrial Revolution Happen Here".  It was selected as what to watch by a couple of TV guides. If you saw it you will have noticed Jeremy Black finding a large piece of sea coal on the beach at Seaton Carew.
In fact, this piece...
We often collect sea coal from the beach there and have brought it home and used it on the kitchen range.
We sometimes find it by the bag load...
And sometimes there is only a sprinkling of coal gravel.
It is brought on to the beach by the tide. If you are north of the mouth of the River Tyne it probably comes from coal seams exposed on the seabed. If you are south of the Tyne then it is more likely to be the debris from the many coal mines along the cliff tops in the old days.
One of the researchers for the TV show tracked down some evidence on my blog and we met the producer to show him where to find sea coal and places where he could film easily. On filming day he chose the southern beach with Redcar steel works in the background.
And he chose the largest of my samples to use for dramatic effect, plucked again from the very beach where I had found it.
It rained for a lot of the day but cleared up just as filming began. Luckily...cos filming that short few seconds of the show took a couple of hours in real life!!! We helped to do things like, hold the umbrella and jog back to the car park to fetch things.
After all that it was fish and chips at "The Almighty Cod" as a just reward.
We were mentioned in the acknowledgements at the end as well.
If you missed it  it should be on i-player for a while or something like that. It was a great show and worth watching.
Cheers Gillian

5 comments:

Lyn said...

Missed it!

Vanessa1988 said...

Look's interesting!
I bet it was fun to be a part of the filming and help out too.
:)
Vanessa
x

helen tilston said...

Hello Gillian

How fascinating and interesting to be a part of the show. It is amazing the amount of shooting time for a few short minutes of air time.

Thanks for sharing this

Helen xx

love those cupcakes said...

How great that your piece of sea coal had a starring role! Will try and catch the programme on i-player.

carol said...

We get different programs up here, or perhaps just differently timed so as to emphasise independence!!. Hopefully it will arrive eventually.