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A visitors guide to the seaside village of Overstrand located on the
North Norfolk Coast. There's something about the village of Overstrand
that brings the term 'suburbia' to ones mind. Bungalows with neat
colourful gardens, flank the main road, whilst deeper into the village
you will find very little traffic.
Back in its past Overstrand was once a fishing
village and this tradition still continues but on a much smaller scale.
The village was popularised by Clement Scott, a Daily Telegraph and
Morning Post writer, who coined the term Poppyland, because of the many
wild red poppies which grew in the grass and wheat fields along the
hedgerows and on the cliffs. His romantic tales about the area drew the
rich and famous and the village became known as the Village of
Millionaires.
Nowadays the village has slipped back into anonymity
and takes the form of a quiet holiday resort with good sandy beaches,
though please note there is a steep causeway down to the beach, which
may not suit all legs!
Golfers are well catered for with the Royal Cromer Golf Course close by.
Overstrand has a village stores, post office, a traditional village
pub/inn with a first class restaurant, a deli and a restaurant with a
sea view at the Sea Marge Hotel and on the cliff sits the Cliff Top
Cafe, which serves good food all day.
For a busier seaside resort visit Cromer
some two miles down the road, where you will find a cinema,
museum, squash and tennis courts, pitch and putt and of course the
famous end of pier show at Cromer Pier, as well as a larger range of
shops for retail therapy.
For Holiday Accommodation in Overstrand and nearby - Self Catering -
Holiday Cottages - Hotels and Bed and Breakfast check out our Overstrand
Holiday Accommodation Pages.
Overstrand was known as the Village
of Millionaires and was the favourite watering hole of the rich and
famous many of whom built huge elaborate second homes here. No less than
six millionaires had houses in the village. The Pleasaunce was
commissioned by Lord and Lady Battersea (she was a Rothschild), the
house was designed by Edwin Lutyens and the grounds designed by Gertrude
Jekyll.
It is now a Christian Fellowship Holiday Home. Overstrand Hall was
designed for Lord and Lady Hillingdon.
The Sea Marge a large mock-Tudor style building and now a hotel and
restaurant was designed by Arthur Bloomfield for Sir Edgar Speye. A
Banker who helped fund the original London Underground, yet who was
deported during the First World War because of his German connections.
Even Winston Churchill’s father owned a house in the village called
Pear Tree Cottage.
The distinguished architect Sir Edwin
Lutyen Methodist Church. It is thought to be the only non-conformist
church he designed. A strange plain brick lower floor and a flint and
glass clerestory above.
In Anglo Saxon times Overstrand was called
Ox Strand. Overstrand means ‘ above the beach’.
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