Amble

History

Various urns, cists, flint spearheads and other evidence of ancient burials were found near to Amble in the 1880s and 1890s. Some of those remains showed signs of cremation. Outcrops of coal had been found along the coastline between the River Coquet and the River Tyne at least as long ago as the reign of Elizabeth I, when unsuccessful attempts had been made to extract and transport it in an economic manner. A failed proposal to use Amble as a port for the shipment of locally sourced coal and salt is recorded in 1618,}} from making the then rare decision to reserve for himself the rights to the coal when he sold the townships of Amble and Hauxley in 1630. A significant factor in the failure of all the early attempts, when compared to the success of ventures in the valleys of the Tyne and the Wear, was that of economies of scale. Those more successful areas at that time had plentiful easily accessed reserves which encouraged investment and the sharing of fixed costs such as harbour facilities, buildings and machinery among a large number of enterprises. The early situation changed as the operators in the valleys exhausted the cheaply extracted ores and found themselves having to mine deeper and also further away from the rivers that were used for transport, thus increasing their costs per unit of coal mined. Some coal was probably being shipped from previously uneconomic places such as Amble and Blyth by the end of the seventeenth century, Amble grew in the nineteenth century as collieries were opened; and the newly built railway links to the Northumberland coalfields made the town a centre for the sea transport and export of coal. Prior to the development of the harbour, the town was "little more than a hamlet", according to the architectural guides originally…

Most-observed species

• Black-headed Gull

  Chroicocephalus ridibundus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  5,528
• Carrion Crow

  Corvus corone Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,678
• Herring Gull

  Larus argentatus Pontoppidan, 1763 · Aves
  4,635
• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,310
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,044
• Eurasian Oystercatcher

  Haematopus ostralegus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,919
• Eurasian Curlew

  Numenius arquata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  3,706
• Gray/Purple Heron

  Ardea cinerea Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  3,601

Most recent

• M 2.8 — 2020-01-23
  1 km NW of Stockton-on-Tees, United Kingdom