Marsden Lime Kilns – The Coastline Most People Don’t Look Twice At

Most people who drive between Marsden and Whitburn know the sight of these tall brick structures without ever really knowing their story. They stand back from the roadside, weathered and imposing, the last big clues to a coastline built on industry as much as scenery. The Marsden Lime Kilns were first built in the 1870s and expanded in the 1890s, feeding off the limestone quarry behind them and coal from the old Marsden pit. Inside these huge chambers, fires burned constantly, day and night, turning limestone into quicklime for farms, steelworks and construction right across the North East. What feels quiet now was once a noisy, fiery and unforgiving workplace — one of many along this stretch of coast that kept the region’s industries moving.

I went out to capture them properly, to try and show them as more than a familiar shape on the journey between South Shields and Sunderland. When you step back and look — or see them from above — you realise just how big they are, and how much the landscape around them still carries the memory of that working past. The sea breeze, the open ground, the old quarry walls… it all makes more sense when you understand what once happened here. The kilns may sit silent today, but they’re still a reminder that the North East’s coastline wasn’t always about beaches and views — it was about graft, ingenuity, and the people who worked it.