Salthouse

Salthouse lies on the North Norfolk coast between Weybourne and Cley-next-the-Sea. At one time, salt was manufactured in the village and exported to Europe. In fact, its name derives directly from 'house for storing salt' - a term recorded in the Domesday Book.

Salthouse Church From the Marshes

The novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) rented the Great Eye Folly in Salthouse from 1950 to 1951. She lived here with her partner Valentine Ackland and spent the time working on her last novel The Flint Anchor (1954).

Randall's Folly, Salthouse Beach

Sylvia Townsend Warner

The folly - a former coastguard building - was originally built by Onesiphorous Randall in the 19th Century but was seriously damaged by the great floods of 1953. It stood on the beach in an exposed and windswept location. Nothing remains of it today.

She describes her first impressions of the folly in a letter to Alyse Gregory - written in 1950:
 

Salthouse has always been prone to flooding - lying, as it does, behind a low shingle bank.

View from Salthouse Church

Salthouse church, which is situated on a hill behind the village, provides a spectacular view across the marshes to the sea. The gravestones in the churchyard are particularly spooky - adorned with winged hourglasses and skulls. Many of the graves belong to sailors who died at sea. Today the church is home to an annual art exhibition.

Headstone in Salthouse churchyard

The poet Charles Bennett is a regular visitor to Salthouse and wrote the following delightful poem about the village. Charles is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Northampton University and was previously the director of the Ledbury Poetry Festival.
 

When we walked up the hill above Salthouse
and saw, looking down where we’d been

ourselves on the beach waving back –
we were here and there and no-place

coming and going at once, perceiving
the speckled clouds as sleeping seals,

as we dipped our toes in the breeze
and watched from the hill’s shoreline

a kestrel come in with the tide,
and hold his stillness open

over the ship weathervane
of a church that was floating and drowned,

his shadow on the ground beneath him
the anchor that kept him aloft.

Links:

Salthouse History

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Salthouse Art

St. Nicholas' Church