A history of Seabrook

In 1924 a travelling magician was engaged at the original pier theatre. After a late show, witnesses saw him walking towards the end of the pier carrying a small wooden case. He was never seen again.

The case was found later, floating near the harbour mouth. That is the whole of what is recorded. A good deal more is told about the night, and all of it was added afterwards by people who were not on the pier.

The town calls it The Vanishing at Seabrook Pier. The Society has been offered several explanations over the years and has not been persuaded by any of them.

In the first half of the nineteenth century Seabrook had a reputation for smuggling. Brandy, tobacco and French silks are the goods usually named.

Several of the harbour cottages have cellars that appear to be older than the buildings above them. It is said that these cellars connect to a network of tunnels leading towards the cliffs. No full tunnel system has ever been confirmed. Builders working in the harbour district do, however, occasionally report bricked-up passages.

The Society records such reports as it receives them. It distinguishes between a cellar, which can be measured, and a tunnel, which so far cannot.

In the winter of 1941, during a storm, distress flares were seen offshore. A small lifeboat crew launched to investigate. The boat was found afterwards, drifting and empty. No bodies were recovered.

The official explanation was that the boat capsized in heavy seas. No other explanation has been offered on the record. Several have been offered off it, for the most part in the Gull and Lantern, and the Society does not repeat them here.

The old lifeboat slipway can still be seen from the sea wall.

The original office of the Seabrook Chronicle burned down in the middle of the night in 1956. The fire was ruled accidental.

The newspaper’s archive for that year was destroyed with the building. Residents said at the time that the editor had recently been working on a controversial story involving local officials. No copy of any such story survives, which proves nothing in either direction.

The Society has kept its own photographs ever since, in its room above the library, and recommends the practice.

The land on which the West Seabrook housing now stands was owned by a small farming family. In 1973 they sold it, unexpectedly, and moved away.

There is nothing remarkable in a farm being sold for building. What has kept the matter alive is that the paperwork for the sale is strangely difficult to locate. The Society has asked for it in the usual places and has been directed, with great courtesy, from each to the next.

It records the sale as a fact and the difficulty as a fact, and draws no conclusion from one about the other.

In 1982 the keeper of the lighthouse was found dead inside it.

Three things were noted at the time and have been repeated ever since. No note was found. Several pages had been removed from the lighthouse logbook. And several of the lights had been extinguished that night.

Each of the three has been explained separately, more than once. No explanation yet put to the Society accounts for all of them together. The lighthouse stands on the point that shelters the harbour, and the keeper is still spoken of in the town with some care.

In 1997 a small fishing boat sank just outside the harbour. The owner claimed that the hull had been damaged deliberately. The insurance investigators disagreed, and there the matter rested.

The boat was never raised. The wreck is said to lie on the seabed somewhere near the estuary, and fishermen occasionally claim that their nets snag on it. The Society has no means of testing this. It observes only that a net may snag on a good many things, and that the story is told more often afloat than ashore.

During a winter storm in 2008 a guest staying at the Cliffside Hotel vanished. The guest’s car remained in the hotel car park.

The police believed that the guest had gone walking along the cliffs and had fallen into the sea. It is a reasonable belief. The cliff path is exposed and the weather was bad. No body was ever recovered.

The Society holds no account of the matter beyond this one and records it as open. It is asked for an opinion from time to time, and has none.

Many years ago a business concerned with the redevelopment of the harbour collapsed. Shortly afterwards the brother of the present mayor left Seabrook, suddenly, and he has not lived in the town since.

The matter is rarely discussed. Several of the fishermen still refuse to speak about it, as the Society has established by asking them.

The Society can give no date, having been offered several. It records the story because the town knows it, and adds nothing to it.

One house on Cliff Road has stood empty for almost twenty years. The owner moved abroad after the death of his wife.

Lights are occasionally reported in the windows. No one admits to having keys.

The Society does not enquire into private houses and has not enquired into this one. It notes that an empty house with a light in it is among the oldest stories there are, and that this one differs from the others chiefly in having an address. Visitors are asked to view it, if they must, from the pavement.

The harbour has warehouses that are no longer in use, and for some time it was said that one of them was being visited at night. The police are understood to have looked into it more than once and to have found nothing.

Empty buildings on a working quay invite talk. The Society holds no document, photograph or first-hand account, and so records only that the story was told.

All Hallows churchyard has yew trees, iron railings and a lychgate. In its far corner there is a grave marker without a name. It carries a date, 1903, and nothing else.

No church record identifies who was buried there. The Society has read the registers for the year, as others have before it, and the entry is not in them.

Visitors are asked to keep to the path and to remember that it is a grave. The Society is asked about it more often than about anything else in the town. It gives the same answer each time, which is the date.