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Dove Marine Laboratory, Cullercoats

The Dove Marine Laboratory, situated just above the sands within Cullercoats Bay, is a research and teaching laboratory which forms part of the School of Biology within Newcastle University.
The original Laboratory was established in October 1897. It comprised a small wooden hut sited next to the Saltwater Baths on Cullercoats Bay, and was used by Armstrong College to study the waters of the north-east coastline. On the 28 March 1904 the Laboratory and Baths were destroyed by fire, but it was agreed that the work of the Laboratory should continue. In 1906, the local landowner, geologist Wilfred Hudleston, FRS, offered not only to make the site of the old Baths available for newer, larger, facilities, but also offered to finance their construction. He was reluctant to publicise his generosity, and asked that the building be named after one of his ancestors, Eleanor Dove, when it was opened by the Duke of Northumberland in September 1908 NZ3671 : Dove Marine Laboratory, Cullercoats. The Laboratory became a department of Armstrong College when the building and land were purchased by the college following Hudleston's death in 1909, and soon grew in reputation, acquiring its first boat in 1911. The Laboratory also operated a public aquarium and once housed the coble in which Grace Darling and her father rescued passengers from the SS Forfashire in 1838. In 1967 responsibility for the Laboratory was transferred to Newcastle University.
As a research facility the Laboratory is normally closed to the public, but opens for visitors on certain days as part of the European Heritage Open Day scheme.
Facilities include: a large open-plan aquarium with a flow-through water system; a closed recirculating seawater system with a capacity of 2000 litres and with temperature (3-20°) and light controls; five experimental cabinets; a lecture theatre which seats 50 students; two laboratories for smaller group teaching; a library/information centre and a multi-purpose sea-going research ship, currently the RV 'Bernicia', a small trawler-type vessel just over 16 metres in length, used in the North Sea and in local river estuaries.
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