Panel 5 - Salting, Smoking & Squares -1830 to 1930

A guide book to Northumberland published in 1888 described Seahouses as "a malodorous place, where fish-curing is extensively carried on".

It is not difficult to imagine what the impact on one's senses would have been on this spot a century or more ago during the summer months when the harbour was full of herring boats unloading their catches which were then trundled uphill to the various herring sheds where gangs of 'herring lassies' were waiting to split open the silvery fish, clean and gut them and pack them into barrels of brine for export. In 1843-4 six thousand barrels of herring were shipped from the harbour.

The 'herring lassies', working in gangs of 3 or 4, followed the fishing fleet down Britain's East Coast from Orkney and Shetland in the spring until they reached Yarmouth and Lowestoft in the autumn, sleeping mainly in dormitories above the herring sheds. They could earn up to ten shillings (50p) per day - a princely sum in those days - for a job that was both strenuous and repetitive. While waiting for the fish to arrive the lasses would spend their time knitting the traditional fisher ganseys. Some Seahouses girls would leave home in the spring to join the gangs working their way south.

It was here in Seahouses that the world's first kipper is said to have been produced as the result of an accident when some split herring were left in a shed where a fire had been left on overnight. The following morning the accident was discovered with the fish all 'ruined' by the smoke. However, one was tasted and the kipper was born. Many of the herring sheds were then converted to smokehouses. The last remaining working example of a smokehouse is opposite this panel - the premises of Swallow Fish where fish is still smoked to this day.

As you walked to this point from the harbour you would have passed a few examples of the traditional Fishermen's Squares dating back to the early 19th Century. They consist of fishermen's cottages grouped around three sides of a courtyard. The courtyard was used for mending the nets and baiting the lines, with the buildings providing some protection from the elements.

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