Welcome to seatonsnook.com, an online sound archive run by me, Dr Peter Falconer.  I am a sonic journalist based in the UK, documenting sounds from places and events all over the world. (What Is Sonic Journalism?)

 

Up until recently I had worked either on sites currently in use - such as the Mandrake Fields Meditation Park↗̱ in Stockton, California - or on subjects with a well documented and widely accepted history - including my project on the manufacture of Aspirin↗̱.  

 

Yet it was in a return to the area in which I grew up, that I found the most uncertainty and mystery.

 

Seaton Snook was a small town on the County Durham coastline, in the North East of England.  It was adjacent to Seaton Carew, my hometown.  However, until 2017, I had never heard of it.  As a child, I had played on the sand dunes and marsh flats where it once stood, but with absolutely no awareness that the site on which I would run around, was once a thriving community of fishermen, blacksmiths, teachers, preachers, seacoalers, murderers, lovers, musicians and magicians. There was once a church, a school, a fairground, a railway station, an Air Force base… 

 

Then, in 1968, it vanished. 

 

This site is an archive of sounds from and related to the area, as we try and uncover the history of this forgotten town, and hopefully answer the question: