Eccles-on-Sea
What remains of Eccles lies on the Norfolk
coast between Sea Palling and
Happisburgh.
Today this is only the Bush Estate - a collection of
pre-war bungalows and caravans tucked in behind the sand dunes.
However, Eccles was once a complete village - although
it has always been under the threat from the sea. In 1605
it petitioned for a reduction in its taxes when only 14
houses and 300 acres of land remained following a
ferocious storm in 1604.
The Bush Estate
On January 25th 1895 St. Mary's church at Eccles
finally fell into the sea and the church tower was a
familiar sight protruding from the beach.
Eccles Church Tower
In Norfolk Life, Lilias Rider Haggard
(1892-1968) recalls visiting Eccles when she was a child
and witnessing the gruesome sight of skeletons exposed
in the sea-washed graveyard.
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| 'One September day
years ago, when the tower of Eccles Church still stood
on the dunes, there came a north-easterly gale and a
'scour' which swept the sand from the old graveyard,
leaving the long outlines of the graves washed clean by
the sea. In one lay an almost perfect skeleton embedded
in the clay, the hollow-eyed skull gazing up at the
limitless sweep of the sky.' |
Nothing remains of St, Mary's today - though
occasionally pieces of masonry are washed up.
'Eccles' is derived from the Latin word for 'Church'
(Ecclesia) and this connection helped Anthony Thwaite - a
Norfolk-based poet - to write the following poem about
the village:
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Cliffs sifting
down, stiff grassblades bent,
Subdued, and shouldering off thick sand,
Boulders - compacted grout and flint -
Jut from a stranded beach, a land
Adhering lightly to the sea.
Tide-drenched, withdrawn, and drowned again,
Capsized, these buttresses still strain
Towards perpendicularity.The place-name mimes the
fallen church,
Abbreviated, shrunk to this
Truncated word, echo of speech,
A Latin ghost's thin obsequies
Carried by wind, answered by sea -
Ecclesia: the syllables
Curtailed, half heard, like tongueless bells
From empty steeples endlessly. |
This stretch of coast is still notorious for its high
rate of erosion and nearby Happisburgh is currently
under great threat. The beautiful 12th century church of
St Mary's may one day suffer the same fate as its name
sake at
Eccles.
Eccles Beach today
Some people say that you can still hear the
bell of Eccles church ringing under the waves.
Eccles-on-Sea is often referred to today as
'Eccles-in-the-Sea'. The thatched church at nearby
Hempstead is also worth a visit - located about a mile
inland from the Bush Estate and standing alone on a
flat, rather desolate stretch of farmland.
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Links:
More photographs of Eccles and the Bush Estate
St. Mary's, Eccles
Hempstead Church
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Supported
by Norfolk Tourism