The Norfolk Coast
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| 'What a coast this
is, with its salt marshes and lavender, its channels,
dunes, bays and crumbling Ice Age cliffs, lonelier and
wilder than its Suffolk neighbour, Arctic, melancholic,
beautiful, treacherous, with sandbanks and quicksands,
storms and floods, and never-ending erosion.'
Peter Sagar |
The Norfolk coast consists of
nearly 100 miles
of spectacular landscape: from soft, sandy cliffs to
salt-marshes and shingle banks.
Gorleston Beach
Overstrand Beach
Starting at Hopton,
just south of Great Yarmouth, it sweeps northwards
embracing many popular seaside resorts such as
Winterton,
Happisburgh,
Mundesley,
Cromer,
Sheringham and
Holkham. It comes to an end at King's Lynn
- where it merges into Lincolnshire.
Caravan at Happisburgh Much of the Norfolk coast is threatened by coastal
erosion - especially at locations such as
Happisburgh
where the soft cliffs are continually being undermined.
Waves at high tide erode the foot of the cliff causing
the face to weaken and slip. At the next high tide, the
collapsed material is removed and the process begins
again.
Sea Defences at Happisburgh The 12th century church of St. Mary's at Happisburgh is perched
perilously close to the cliff edge and may, one day, suffer the same fate as St. Mary's Church at nearby
Eccles. (Eccles-on-Sea is
often referred to, in a typically humorous Norfolk fashion, as Eccles-in-the-Sea.) |
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Over the centuries the
Norfolk coast has inspired many writers including:
Daniel Defoe, Clement Scott, A. C. Swinburne,
John Betjeman, Anthony Thwaite, George Barker and Kevin Crossley-Holland. Defoe used
the treacherous coast off
Winterton as the location for Robinson Crusoe's
shipwreck. Crossley-Holland has
successfully captured the muddy creeks and saltmarshes
of Burnham Overy
Staithe in his collection Waterslain, while
John Betjeman recalled childhood holidays at Horsey in
East Anglian
Bathe.
Cliffs at Hunstanton
L.P. Hartley used the famous layered cliffs at
Hunstanton as the backdrop
for some of the scenes in his novel The Shrimp and
the Anemone.
The ever changing interplay of
light between the sea, the sky and the land has made the Norfolk coast an inspirational place
for poets, photographers and artists alike.
There is also the inescapable sense of being on the edge
of something. The nature writer Richard Mabey described
Norfolk's appeal as 'the closeness of these unstable
edges' where, to him, the 'world seems to be all
possibility'.
Here is a lovely poem by Frances Cornford entitled: The
Coast: Norfolk which captures something of the
beauty and bleakness of the county's coastline. Cornford was one of Philip Larkin's
favourite poets.
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As on the
highway's quiet edge
He mows the grass beside the hedge,
The old man has for company
The distant, grey, salt-smelling sea,
A poppied field, a cow and calf,
The finches on the telegraph.Across his faded back a
hone,
He slowly, slowly scythes alone
In silence of the wind-soft air,
With ladies' bedstraw everywhere,
With whitened corn, and tarry poles,
And far-off gulls like risen souls. |
Other poems inspired by the Norfolk coast include:1)
A Haven by A.C.
Swinburne (Cromer)
2) Salthouse
by Charles Bennett
3) Eccles by
Anthony Thwaite
4)
Dusk,
Burnham Overy Staithe by Kevin Crossley-Holland
5)
In Memory of David Archer by George Barker (Overstrand)
6)
Thoughts at Happisburgh by Joan Barton
7) The Garden
of Sleep by Clement Scott
8)
The Deserted Church Tower on Sidestrand Cliff by
R.H. Mottram
9) King's
Lynn by R.N. Curry
10)
On A Friend's Escape from Drowning Off the Norfolk Coast
by George Barker (Cromer) |
Links:
More Photographs of the Norfolk Coast
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Supported
by Norfolk Tourism