A Trip to Thorpeness

"The Headlands" built in 1937

Briefly stopping off late in the afternoon at Thorpeness on our Suffolk holiday we took a twirl around the village and of course being coastal dwellers the first stop was the beach coming in past these houses with the perfect sea view

The village of Thorpeness started life as a small fishing village and is reputed to have been the preferred smuggling route into East Anglia but it was about to change early in the 20th century when a Scottish barrister who had made his fortune from the railways bought up a huge tract of land along the coast and in 1910 started to build a holiday village for his friends.  He went on to develop a private fantasy holiday destination building golf course and club house, tennis courts, country club and homes in mock Jacobean and Tudor style sometimes described as 'Romantic Picturesque'

like these from a photograph taken in the 1930s

The Haven houses built c1914

In common with all Suffolk villages Thorpeness has a village sign and this shows its most famous features, the windmill and the House in the Clouds.  The latter was in fact built to hide the water tower whose tank was clad in wood to make it look like a small house on a 5 storey tower.  With mains water installed in the village it was turned into a huge games room and today is a holiday let with I imagine spectacular views and an ideal way to keep fit going up and down its 68 steps.

Three generations of the Ogilvie family owned these village amenities and when the last one dropped dead on the golf course many properties were sold to pay death duties.  Today 400 people live here permanently but the numbers swell to 1,600 in the holiday season

 We sat in the Dolphin Inn beer garden which is situated near the Almshouses built in the 1930s.  We had chosen our holiday weeks well because it encompassed the hottest day of the year just the excuse for a cold beer, if I needed one.

The House in the Clouds was not the only water tower. This is the Westbar a 'Norman' or medieval style building which also hid a water tower.  So there is my ten minute trip around Thorpeness with its countless building styles the last to be built the first of my photographs but there is lots more including a lake with Peter Pan associations but I will have to make a return journey to Suffolk to take pictures of those. 

An entry to ABC Wednesday - a journey through the alphabet which today has stopped on the latter T