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Morston

Morston is a beautiful village which lies on the North Norfolk coast between Blakeney and Wells. It is famous for its salt marshes, for its creek (from which many of the 'seal boats' depart) and for the quality of the food at Morston Hall. Like Blakeney and Salthouse it was once an important sea port but, over time, silting restricted its access to the North Sea.

Boats at Morston Creek

Boats at Morston Quay

The poet Edwin Brock wrote a moving poem about the area called Morston Marshes. Brock moved to Norfolk in the 1970s and lived for most of the time at Low Tharston - next door to fellow poet Anthony Thwaite. In 1993 Brock suffered a stroke which, for many weeks, left him unable to speak and seriously impaired his memory. However, he made a remarkable recovery and then entered a new phase in his writing - much of it inspired by the Norfolk landscape. In his Morston poem he envisages a reincarnation in the bleak but beautiful salt marshes:
 

Into this muddy coastline
the North Sea seeps silently
twice a day
under the kestrel's weather eye

in the growing puddles
gulls drill the marsh
for nothing we can see
or screech their territory
like fishwives
from the tops of poles

even in August
the sky drowns us
in small drops
settling on hair and eyes
wanting us flying in it
or grovelling in the ooze
at the water's edge

I died in this country
and came back
to pay my debts
to its wetlands

something fishes me
all the way
back to where it began

and is beginning again
down the years
with a million denials.


The novelist William Rivière (1954-) set his debut novel Watercolour Sky (1990) in Morston amongst the sailing community. As a child he used to visit his grandmother who had a house in the village and so was very familiar with local landmarks such as church, the creek and the hall.  Morston Manor also features in his novel Echoes of War.

Rivière grew up at Dilham and was the son of the poet and local historian Michael Rivière.
 

Links:

More photographs of Morston

 

 

 

 

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