Norfolk Landscapes

A colourful journey through the Broads, Brecks, Staithes and Churches of Norfolk

Doug Kennedy

• Publisher: Windgather Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781909686823
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Norfolk is a very distinctive county, the most easterly in the British Isles. With the North Sea and The Wash to the east and north it is relatively close to the Netherlands, but Norwich is only a couple of hours by train from London. It has been a center of great political power, but is on no major transport routes, so has no motorways and has been largely bypassed by the Industrial Revolution. As a result, many of its towns and villages are relatively unspoiled, so have kept their old buildings and character and are a delight to visit. Although known for its wide open landscapes, of which there are many, Norfolk has an abundance of delightful corners and beautiful gardens where it is the miniature that charms and tranquillity reigns.
This beautiful photo book captures the essence of Norfolk's varied landscapes in sumptuous images and an informative text that gets underneath the surface of why things look like they do. The Norfolk Broads, Breckland, The Waverley Valley, The Fens and the coastlines are explored in turn along with the wildlife you can encounter on the way. In addition, Norfolk's lovely churches that punctuate every view, and the distinctive traditional buildings that give each area its special flavor are featured.
Doug Kennedy has roamed the County on foot and by boat, seeking out what makes each place special and applying his photographer's eye to capture the scene perfectly. It is a book for everyone who loves the Norfolk to treasure, and a splendid introduction to its landscape for those less familiar with a classic corner of England.

North Norfolk

The final section of this book traverses the spectacular North Norfolk coast from Hunstanton on The Wash in the west to Cromer in the east where the North Sea batters the cliffs. This is one of the driest and sunniest parts of Britain, causing lovers of Hunstanton to call it ‘Sunny Hunny’. Along the entire coast the light has a special quality which seems to bring alive the colours of the awe-inspiring open vistas across marsh, dune and sea. Along the main A149 road which follows the coast lies a string of pretty villages, several of which have the words ‘next-the-sea’ in their names, and all have a staithe, or quay. However, they are actually a little inland these days as the North Sea has been steadily removing sand, pebbles and silt from cliffs along the East Coast of England, depositing them here, on the southern side of The Wash. The result is that the beaches have gradually migrated northwards leaving the settlements stranded up to two miles inland behind acres of dunes and salt marshes that are crossed only by shallow channels linking the staithes to the open sea.

This is a landscape where geese, ducks and wading birds flock in their thousands and the light shimmers off water and mud. It is a unique place that people adore for sailing, walking, bird watching, crabbing, or just relaxing. In contrast, there are the seaside towns at either extremity of Hunstanton in the west and Cromer in the east, each with its beach, beach huts, hotels and shops, not forgetting Cromer’s majestic pier. The pretty flint-clad villages in-between, each with its own character, separate the hilly hinterland from the vast level marshes.

The north is the hilliest part of Norfolk, rising to the County’s highest point of 103 metres (338 ft) at Beacon Hill, a few miles south of Sheringham. This is a varied and pretty landscape where sizeable forests and heath land are interspersed with farms and a number of large estates and country houses.

Looking east along the north coast on a windy day. The image is taken from Cley Eye, at the east end of Blakeney Point. Sheringham is on the headland in the distance, from where the coast starts to turn southwards

A channel at Burnham Overy Staithe

Hunstanton Cliffs

Hunstanton is a pleasant seaside town that came to prominence in Victorian times and remains popular today. It is much more sheltered than Cromer or Sheringham at the other end of this coast and has a quite different appearance because its most typical buildings are constructed of red carrstone, rather than being flint-clad. At low tide, the beach is a vast stretch of fine sand which seems to go on forever out to the shallow sea.

Just north of the town, at Old Hunstanton, the beach is backed by the unique and colourful banded cliffs. On the top is a deep layer of white chalk, which is the bedrock of this area, and then there is an abrupt transition to chalk that is stained a bright brick red by minerals. At the base of the cliff the rock is the hard brown carrstone traditionally used for building houses. Chalk is a sedimentary rock resulting from countless microscopic marine organisms (diatoms) with hard shells falling to a shallow sea floor over millions of years, then getting compacted into rock that is almost pure calcium carbonate. This is normally white and how the sudden colour transition from white to red came about is unexplained.

Great lumps of cliff are constantly falling off as the sea pounds the soft rock, leaving ledges where fulmars nest.

A pair of Fulmars nesting on the cliff face

A close-up of the two types of chalk showing the sudden transition from white to red

A view of the banded cliffs

The Western Part of the North Coast

From St Edmund’s Point, north-east of Hunstanton, the banded cliffs end, to be replaced by sand dunes, which these days are speckled with colourful beach huts. The dunes continue for many miles, protecting the low-lying marsh and farmland behind them from the pounding North Sea waves and tides. Where dunes have not formed, such as along encroaching channels, salt marshes have been created where reeds, samphire and curlews thrive.

The first village after Hunstanton is Holme-next-the-Sea, which, along with neighbouring Thornham and Tichwell, is a good mile inland nowadays. Most houses are constructed of ‘clunch’, which is a hard chalky rock that gives the houses a quite different appearance from those further to the east. (see page 97).

At Holme and at Titchwell there are nature reserves reached by tracks from the villages, where the salt marshes, the freshwater lakes and the beach beyond are all wonderful locations from which to watch birds. Gulls, terns and sanderlings comb the beach for food among the breaking waves, whilst a few yards away, all manner of ducks and waders, including avocets, stalk across the shining mud on spindly legs, stabbing it with their long beaks in the search for hidden delicacies. Great stretches of the marshes are covered in samphire, a succulent plant that copes with the harsh, salty conditions and which has become quite popular in restaurants as a salad vegetable. The less marginal areas are covered in reeds where bitterns, buntings and warblers hide and call.

From Titchwell, the A149 coast road continues in an easterly direction towards Sheringham through a series of picturesque villages that have become very popular as holiday destinations for yacht enthusiasts and those who love the open salt marsh scenery and its wildlife. Apart from Wells-next-the-Sea, the staithes are separate from the m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• East Norfolk: Yarmouth, the Broads and the River Yare
• Some Common Birds
• Norwich and Central Norfolk
• Some Norfolk Churches
• South Norfolk: Breckland
• South Norfolk: the Waveney Valley
• West Norfolk: Marsh and Fen
• Norfolk Dragonflies
• Norfolk’s West Coast and The Wash
• North Norfolk from Hunstanton to Cley
• Colourful Village Shops
• North Norfolk Around Sheringham and Cromer
• Index of Places
• Acknowledgements