Cullercoats

A fishing harbour with a pier since 1677

Tucked into a sheltered bay between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay, Cullercoats began as a small settlement built on coal export and salt-panning, with its first pier constructed in 1677. By the 19th century it had become a proper fishing village, its distinctive flat-bottomed cobles working the North Sea for herring and white fish, and its Volunteer Life Brigade — founded in 1852 — watching over them from a clifftop lookout still standing today.

The artists' colony

That picturesque harbour and its close-knit fishing community drew a wave of painters through the late 19th century, but none more significant than the American artist Winslow Homer, who lodged in Cullercoats from April 1881 to November 1882. Living among the village's "fishwives" and "herring girls," Homer produced dozens of watercolours and oils of women mending nets, waiting for boats, and working the shore — work later credited with transforming his entire artistic direction, and now held in major museums across the United States.

Cullercoats today

The fishing fleet has dwindled, but Cullercoats Bay, framed by its Victorian piers, remains one of the prettiest stretches of the North Tyneside coast, and a small but proud arts community continues a tradition Homer helped start almost a century and a half ago.