Striking Pictures taken by Birkin Haward Senior after the 1953 flood

This shows 'Great Eye Folly' - as its final owners, the Joplings, called it - with it's whole seaward front torn off by the great storm of January 1953. It remained like this for a couple of years, it had to be demolished finally in June 1956.
John Jopling who had spent all his childhood holidays there with his parents described his Mother coming to retrieve what she could the following day, " I will always remember her going to a drinks cupboard which stood in the part of the building which collapsed. When she unlocked it, the back of the cupboard had gone but all the drinks and glasses remained neatly stacked"

Birkin's three sons, John, Bill and Birkin junior play football on a great stretch of sand which had been deposited there by the flood.

This is taken from Gramborough hill with 'Little Eye' visible far left and 'Great Eye' with the Rocket House still standing erect. The shingle bank is flattened.

left:
Facing us is the house called 'Edenfield' that Birkin Haward bought with his demob money in 1947.
It was the home of the Woodhouses, Fred and Julia with their children Geoffrey, Pauline, Mary, Robert and Barbara. They moved out after the flood and the Haward family started to repair it and make it into their holiday home.

'The Greens' is the building on the left, occupied by Derek Howlett on the night of the flood, and nearest us is the Old Bakery with the single story outhouse building lying in rubble in the foreground, no longer attached to 'the Dolls House' end wall. Later Nigel Parkinson, who had bought the bakery six months before the flood, built an extension on this patch with arches underneath to accommodate the next flood!

below: The view from Alfie Lynn's land next door



above: 'Edenfield' on the left then 'The Greens' then Cliff Woodhouse's house, the end of the three cottages further off and the Old Bakery on the right.

And here (below) is an E. D. P. picture taken from exactly the same spot as the photo on the left, but looking North out over the flooded marsh towards the Rocket House. Alfie Lynn's ruined cowhouse is in the foreground.

above, another picture by Birkin Haward:

The three cottages just east of Cookies Crab Shop (which is facing us on right), remained derelict and uninhabited until they were bulldozed to make room for a new building on the same spot.

MORE of this view   

The same cottages from the crab shop side

 

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