Cultural Use and Visual Impact
Since its construction, the station has made appearances in a small number of films shot locally. These include:
- Seacoal - a movie made by Amber Films in 1985. The station is features heavily as a backdrop in the beach scenes, where the characters are working, collecting seacoal. Photographer Mik Critchlow (who would later become involved with Amber Films' sister company Side Gallery) also documented the seacoalers at Lynemouth, between 1981 and 1983. He also used the power station as an industrial backdrop to some of his images.
- Billy Elliot - a 2000 film directed by Stephen Daldry. The power station and the smelter both feature as an industrial backdrop in the film's cemetery scenes. The power station's coal sorting area is used to represent a colliery.
The chimneys of both the power station and the smelter are strong landmarks on the local coastline, and can be seen over a 25 kilometres (16 mi) stretch of coast, from Cresswell down to South Shields pier.
Read more about this topic: Lynemouth Power Station
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