Sound mirrors

Ivor Parrington has sent the Seaham Family History Group a 1976 photograph of the now demolished acoustic mirror at Seaham.

This is the first picture that I have seen of it. As had been reported, the design looks like the World War I sound mirrors at Boulby, Redcar and Sunderland in the northeast, and the one at Selsey in Sussex. The sketch of the reported mirror at Hartlepool looks the same too.

This would date the Seaham mirror to about 1916.

Apparently there is nothing left now, but the location has been identified as being here:

There is some discussion from people who remember it and a painting of it at Seaham Scenes.

(thanks to Raymond Thompson of SFHG)

David Angus of the Seaham online community history project www.east-durham.co.uk has tracked down the probable location of the Seaham sound mirror, though cautions “it is at least 55 years since I saw it and then only once.”

He’s found two men who agree on the location shown below. Apparently the mirror may have been used for shooting practice by the local Home Guard during World War II.

Sadly it would appear it is no longer in existence; when it did exist it looked something like the surviving Sunderland mirror.

Vernon Prior writes:

I left Seaham in 1947 and have rarely been back. I do remember as a child, however, playing around an acoustic mirror (complete with metal rod for supporting the microphone) situated on the high ground (Kinley or Kilney Hill) to the south west of Dawdon, Seaham Harbour. Having looked at the photographs, I can report that it was similar to the Sunderland example in terms of shape and size. I have no idea what state it might be in now, or even if it still exists.

Anyone got any ideas? Let me know! Looking at a map, it would make sense for there to be a mirror in the area, as it would be in the “gap” along the coast between the mirror at Sunderland and the now demolished mirror said to have existed at Clavering, Hartlepool.

UPDATE 15 March 2008: I’ve just rediscovered a previous post about Seaham. It looks like there is agreement on its existence - now we just need to find it!

Raymond Thompson of the Seaham Family History Group writes to say that “One of our elderly residents seems to recall a concrete structure (long gone) which he believes to have been a sound mirror situated on an elevated site in Seaham, County Durham about 2 miles from the coast.” On seeing a picture of the Sunderland Carley Hill Mirror he said it was the same design, and another Seaham resident “remembers it vividly”.

There isn’t a mirror in Seaham today, so presumably it has now been demolished, but does anyone know more? The north eastern mirors are all a bit of mystery, no-one seems to know anything about them. While I don’t really know the area, from a map I’d guess that Hartlepool and Seaham would be good locations for mirrors if some kind of chain had exisited incorporating the surviving mirrors at Boulby, Redcar and Sunderland.