Sea Coalers

The Sea coaling Community at Lynemouth Beach in Northumberland, developed in the early 1980s.

Mik took these photographs between 1981 and 1983. His cousin Trevor was working as a seacoaler at Lynemouth, Northumberland and he informed him that the rights to the beach had been sold to a private contractor,who had blocked the route which the sea coalers had traditionally taken with their  horses and carts down to the beach.

Mik went to Lynemouth with Trevor to photograph the concrete bollards which were barring the route as evidence to use against the private contractor. It became a relationship with the sea coalers from then on and he began making photographs around the seacoal camp as the trust developed within the community.

In many ways he was in a privileged position as normally anyone with a camera there would be driven away. The seacoal community were suspicious that anyone with cameras worked for the Social Security. He was allowed to photograph as and when and revisited the sea coalers camp  two or three times a year.

The bollards remained. The sea coalers had to find their own way round making new routes to the beach. The contractor later got excavation rights for the beach sand as well.

Shortly after showing Mik's work to Amber Films/Side Gallery and following an introduction to his cousin Trevor, Amber Films bought a caravan on the site and began working on the feature film 'Seacoal'  which later won the European Film Award in 1986, while Chris Killip developed his photographic project 'Seacoal' for Side some of which were  later included his books  'In Flagrante' (Secker) and 'Seacoal'  (Steidl)