Sea Glass Hunting in the North East

The Complete Guide to Northumberland and Durham

Region: Northumberland, Tyneside and County Durham
Beaches covered: 11
Best rated: Top (two of them)
Coastline: North Sea

The only region where the glass was made on purpose

Everywhere else in Britain, sea glass is an accident. Bottles thrown overboard, crockery dumped as ballast, a century of ordinary rubbish worked smooth by the sea. That’s true in Cornwall, it’s true in Devon, it’s true almost everywhere.

The North East is different, and it’s not a small difference. For roughly a hundred and fifty years this coast was the glassmaking capital of the world. Not of Britain, but of the world. Tyneside and Wearside had the coal to fire the furnaces, the sand, the river access and the shipping, and by the middle of the nineteenth century the stretch between the Tyne and the Tees was producing glass on a scale nowhere else could match.

The Royal Hartley Bottleworks at Seaton Sluice was the largest glass factory in England when it opened in 1763. The Londonderry Bottleworks at Seaham was one of the largest in Britain when it opened ninety years later. Sowerby’s of Gateshead was turning out pressed and iridescent glass that was shipped worldwide.

And all of them threw their waste straight into the North Sea.

That’s why this region has two Top beaches when most of Britain has none. It’s why Seaham carpets genuinely carpets with frosted glass in a way that draws collectors from America and Japan. It’s why the pieces here are thick, old, and come in colours you’ll hunt a lifetime for elsewhere. You are not finding litter on this coast.

You are finding the industrial output of the Victorian world, tumbled by a hundred and fifty years of North Sea weather.

If you only ever hunt one part of Britain, hunt this one.

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North East sea glass at a glance

County Durham and Hartlepool

Seaham: Top
The best sea glass beach in Britain and internationally recognised as one of the best anywhere. The Londonderry Bottleworks dumped waste directly into the sea from 1853 to 1921, including multi-coloured end-of-day glass that’s effectively unique to this stretch of coast. Dog-friendly all year.

Blast Beach: Good
A mile south of Seaham at Nose’s Point, sharing the same glass source but almost nothing else. Dark sand, limestone stacks and the ruins of Dawdon Colliery and an old ironworks. Once one of the most polluted beaches in Europe, now National Trust land and the Alien 3 prison planet. Steep, rough access. Where the regulars go when Seaham is busy.

Blackhall Rocks: Good
Limestone stacks, caves and a beach that spent a century buried under colliery spoil before Turning the Tide cleaned it up. Get Carter was filmed along here. Good glass, and a genuinely moving piece of industrial recovery.

Crimdon: Good
The southern end of the Heritage Coast, backed by the only sand dunes on this shoreline. A 1950s day-tripper resort that went quiet and stayed quiet. The best beach in Britain for iridescent carnival glass. Dogs all year; nationally important little tern colony on the shingle in summer.

Hartlepool Headland: Fair
The old town on its promontory, a medieval port, a shipbuilding centre, and the place where the first British civilians of the First World War were killed when German battlecruisers shelled the town in December 1914. Centuries of harbour material, and the Steetley Pier area is specifically named by hunters. Seasonal dog restrictions at Block Sands and Fish Sands.

Seaton Carew: Fair
A Victorian and Edwardian resort south of the Headland, wide and sandy. Occasional finds rather than reliable ones, but easy access and a proper seafront. Note both the summer dog restriction and the little tern colony that relocated here from Crimdon.

Best right now
This coast is storm-driven more than tide-driven, so the rankings swing hard after a North Sea blow. The Sea Glass Score updates daily; check it the night before rather than picking from this page.

Compare your Beaches on our Hot Beaches page, updated daily with the best beaches for today, the next seven days, as well as the movers and shakers.

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How the coast divides

Northumberland: Boulmer, Alnmouth, Newbiggin is the wild end. Long empty beaches, castles on headlands, rocky reefs and gullies, and very few people. The glass here is less concentrated than at Seaham, but the beaches are bigger, quieter and often more rewarding to work. Boulmer in particular is a proper hunter’s beach: you need to know what you’re doing, and it pays you back if you do.

Tyneside: Whitley Bay and St Mary’s Island is the urban middle. Metro access, promenades, facilities, and the Seaton Sluice bottleworks legacy underneath it. The easiest hunting in the region logistically, and the best place to bring someone who’s never done this before.

County Durham: Seaham and Blackhall Rocks is the region’s industrial heartland and the reason it’s famous. This is a coast that was genuinely wrecked by coal and glass for a century and has recovered into something extraordinary. The Durham Heritage Coast is the single most productive stretch of sea glass shoreline in the country.

A note on boundaries: Saltburn, Staithes and Runswick Bay sit administratively in the North East but belong to the Yorkshire coast in every way that matters to a hunter; they’re in the Yorkshire hub instead.

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Every North East beach we’ve rated

Northumberland

Boulmer: Top
A former fishing and smuggling village with a rocky, gullied shoreline that catches and holds glass. Quiet, unspoilt, and the beach serious hunters name when they’ve already done Seaham. Best colour variety in the region.

Alnmouth: Good
A wide estuary beach below a village of pastel houses, at the mouth of the River Aln. Reliable finds, beautiful setting, and a mainline station a short walk away; the most accessible good beach on the entire east coast.

Newbiggin-by-the-Sea: Good
A Victorian resort and former coal port on a curved bay, with Sean Henry’s Couple standing offshore. Solid, consistent hunting. Note the seasonal dog restriction. It’s one of only two on the whole Northumberland coast.

Tyneside

Whitley Bay & St Mary’s Island: Good
Lighthouse on a tidal island, a long promenade beach, and the legacy of the Royal Hartley Bottleworks at Seaton Sluice just north of the largest glass factory in England in its day. Easy access, good facilities, ideal first hunt.

Marsden:
Limestone stacks, sea caves and Marsden Rock, below the old South Shields glass and chemical works. Souter Lighthouse above, and a pub built into the cliff face reached by lift. Dramatic in a way no other beach here manages.

Wearside

Roker & Seaburn: Good
Where English glassmaking began, a mile from Benedict Biscop’s monastery. Victorian seafront, Roker Pier, and twelve centuries of glass and pottery in the same water. Dogs restricted at Roker and part of Seaburn in summer.

County Durham

Seaham: Top
The best sea glass beach in Britain and internationally recognised as one of the best anywhere. The Londonderry Bottleworks dumped waste directly into the sea from 1853 to 1921, including multi-coloured end-of-day glass that’s effectively unique to this stretch of coast. Dog-friendly all year.

Blackhall Rocks: Good
Limestone stacks, caves and a beach that spent a century buried under colliery spoil before the Turning the Tide project cleaned it up. Get Carter was filmed along here. Good glass, good pottery, and a genuinely moving piece of industrial recovery.

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What North East sea glass actually looks like

Common: Green, brown, white and in far greater volume than anywhere else in Britain. On a good day at Seaham you’re sorting rather than searching.

Occasional: Aqua, cobalt blue, pale blue. Colours that are rare-day finds elsewhere turn up here with real regularity, because the source was industrial rather than domestic.

Rare: Red, orange, yellow, purple. All genuinely rare, all documented on this coast, and all more likely here than anywhere else in the country.

The North East specials: End-of-day multis swirling multi-coloured pieces formed when workers swept together the last of each shift’s coloured batches. These are a Seaham signature, and they exist almost nowhere else on Earth. Sea glass marbles too, from the bottleworks’ own production.

And keep an eye out for iridescent pieces. Sowerby’s of Gateshead produced pressed iridescent glass that collectors now call carnival glass, and fragments of it turn up along the Durham coast with a distinctive oily rainbow sheen that catches the light differently to ordinary frosted glass. It’s an unusual find and worth knowing about before you walk past one.

Pieces here are thick. Bottleworks waste is heavier stock than domestic bottles, so it survives tumbling at collectable size. North East glass is the best raw material in Britain for jewellery for exactly that reason.

Find something special? Use our sea glass scanner, GlassLore, to find out rarity, value and history; then you can share to our finds gallery and, more importantly, earn points to climb our hunters leaderboard – are you ready to compete?

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When to go

Winter, and the rougher the better. This coast is storm-driven, not tide-driven. The tidal range here is around four and a half metres on springs, modest, considerably less than the Bristol Channel, so it isn’t the tide that opens up new ground. It’s the weather. A hard North Sea blow churns material off the seabed that hasn’t been ashore in years.

The day after a storm is the best hunting in Britain. Not during this; the coast is genuinely dangerous in heavy weather, with big swell, unstable cliffs in places and fast-covering rock platforms. The morning after is when you go.

Ebbing tide, spring tides preferred. Arrive as the water’s going out and work down. Around new and full moon, you’ll get the most exposure.

Go early. Seaham in particular draws hunters from across the world, and on a good winter Saturday you will not be the first person on the beach. First light is not an exaggeration here.

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Dogs on the North East coast – the best in England

I write these sections for every region, and they’re usually a list of bans. This one isn’t. The North East is the most dog-friendly hunting coast in England, by a wide margin, and it’s barely mentioned anywhere.

County Durham: no beach restrictions at all. Durham County Council considered introducing them and decided not to, meaning dog walkers have the run of the county’s beaches, including Seaham Hall, Dalton Burn and Featherbed Rocks. The entire Durham Heritage Coast, the most productive sea glass shoreline in Britain, is open to dogs year-round, all day, with no dates to check. That is remarkable.

Hartlepool Borough Council is the exception on this coast. Unlike neighbouring Durham, Hartlepool does restrict dogs from Block Sands and Fish Sands at the Headland, and from the stretch of Seaton Carew between the Norton Hotel and the Coach Park, between 1 May and 30 September.

There’s a good reason for the Seaton Carew one. The little terns that used to nest at Crimdon relocated here, and the nesting site sits inside the existing seasonal exclusion zone, which is doing real conservation work rather than just managing crowds. The colony is monitored by Durham Wildlife Trust wardens who fence it and watch it through the season, and disturbing the birds or their nests is a criminal offence. Stay well clear of the roped areas, whatever the date.

Northumberland: two beaches restricted in the whole county. Northumberland County Council’s order excludes dogs from just two stretches: the section of Newbiggin-by-the-Sea beach from the breakwater at Church Point to the promenade access at Sidney Crescent, and the section at Blyth from Beachway to the southern end of the Links Road car park between 1 May and 30 September. Everything else, including Boulmer and Alnmouth, is unrestricted. And at Newbiggin the restriction is partial: dogs are still allowed on the south end of the bay and along the full promenade.

One thing to note: the Northumberland restrictions apply at any time between those dates, not just 10am to 6pm. There’s no early-morning exemption the way there is in Cornwall, so an August dawn hunt at Newbiggin’s north end still isn’t permitted.

North Tyneside: four restricted areas, 1 May to 30 September. King Edward’s Bay and Cullercoats Bay in full, Whitley Bay beach south of Panama Gardens, and the southern section of Tynemouth Longsands. Whitley Bay north of Panama Gardens stays open, as does the northern end of Longsands towards Cullercoats, so the St Mary’s Island end, which is the end you want for glass anyway, is fine.

Sunderland restricts Roker and part of Seaburn from 1 May to 30 September, in force at all times.

Fines are the usual £100, rising to £1,000 at court.

For dog-friendly cafés and pubs, the Yappy Places listings for Seaham, Alnwick and Whitley Bay are worth a look; there’s a good post-hunt culture on this coast, and a lot of places that expect wet dogs.

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Worth the stop, but not for the glass

Bamburgh: the castle on the dunes is one of England’s great sights. The beach is glorious, vast, and sandy in a way that produces almost nothing. Go for the castle.

Tynemouth Priory and Longsands: priory ruins on the headland, a proper Sunday market in the station, and one of the best town beaches in the country. Dogs are restricted in summer at the south end.

Souter Lighthouse and Marsden Bay: the first lighthouse in the world designed for alternating electric current, sea stacks, and a pub built into a cave.

Durham itself, twenty minutes inland from Seaham, and the cathedral are worth rearranging a day for.

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Planning a North East hunting trip

One day: Seaham. Nowhere else, and don’t try to add anything. Arrive at first light on an ebbing tide, work the north beach, and give it the whole day.

A weekend: Seaham and Blackhall Rocks on day one (twenty minutes apart on the Heritage Coast), then north to Boulmer and Alnmouth on day two. Base in Seaham or Alnwick.

Three days: Add the Tyneside beaches and Newbiggin. Base yourself in Newcastle if you want city evenings, or Alnwick if you want the coast.

Getting here without a car: This is the best-served hunting coast in Britain. The East Coast Main Line runs through Durham, Newcastle, Alnmouth and Berwick. Seaham has its own station on the Durham Coast Line with the beach about twenty-five minutes’ walk away. The Tyne and Wear Metro reaches Whitley Bay and Tynemouth directly. Alnmouth station is a short walk from the beach. You can hunt this entire region on trains.

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From beach to jewellery

North East glass is the best material in Britain to work with — thick, old, properly frosted, and in colours that simply don’t appear elsewhere. A genuine Seaham multi is the kind of piece you build a whole design around. At Mermaid Tears, every piece of jewellery starts on a UK beach exactly like these, hand-hunted and handmade into something you’ll keep. Browse the collection.

Heading up here? The UK Sea Glass Field Guide covers colour identification, rarity tiers and how to tell a genuine end-of-day multi from a lookalike worth reading before Seaham rather than after.

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Disclaimer: Tide times, dog restrictions, parking charges and beach conditions change regularly. Dog restrictions in this region are set separately by Northumberland County Council, North Tyneside, Sunderland and Durham County Council, and are reviewed on different cycles; always check current signage before visiting. This coast has unstable cliffs in places and rock platforms that cover quickly; never hunt during or immediately after a storm surge, and check your turn time before you start.

Last updated: August 2026

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Frequently asked questions

Where is the best place to find sea glass in the North East?
Seaham, without qualification. It’s the best sea glass beach in Britain and one of the best in the world, thanks to seventy years of the Londonderry Bottleworks discharging directly into the sea. Boulmer in Northumberland is the strongest alternative, and the one experienced hunters go to next.

Why is there so much sea glass in the North East?
Because Tyneside, Wearside and the Durham coast were the centre of the world glass industry for much of the nineteenth century, and the factories dumped their waste into the North Sea. This is the only part of Britain where sea glass is industrial in origin at scale, which is why the volume, thickness, and colour range are all so much better here than anywhere else.

What is end-of-day sea glass and where do you find it?
Multi-coloured swirled glass, formed when bottleworks employees swept together the last remnants of each shift’s coloured batches. It’s a Seaham signature and exists in almost no quantity elsewhere on Earth. Finding one is a genuine event.

Are North East beaches dog friendly?
More than anywhere else in England. County Durham has no beach dog restrictions at all, so the entire Heritage Coast including Seaham is open year round. Northumberland restricts only two beaches, parts of Newbiggin and Blyth, between 1 May and 30 September. North Tyneside and Sunderland restrict a handful of specific beaches over the same period.

When is the best time to hunt sea glass in the North East?
The day after a North Sea storm, in winter, on an ebbing spring tide, as early as you can get there. This coast is driven by weather rather than tidal range, so the storms matter more than the moon.

Can you get to the North East sea glass beaches by train?
Yes, better than anywhere else in the country. Seaham has a station on the Durham Coast Line about twenty-five minutes’ walk from the beach. Alnmouth is on the East Coast Main Line. Whitley Bay and Tynemouth are on the Tyne and Wear Metro. It’s entirely possible to hunt this region car-free.

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Notes:

Four beaches I’ve left out that may belong. Blast Beach, Hartlepool, Crimdon and Howick/Sugar Sands all came up in the regional planning, but I’m not certain which are written and live. Crimdon in particular deserves a slot if it exists; the iridescent Sowerby’s angle is the kind of specific, verifiable hook nobody else has, and I’ve folded a mention of it into the colours section so the page still carries the information either way. Send me the list, and I’ll slot them in.