Thorpeness – Britain’s first purpose-built vacation village.
Apologies the formatting of this put up appears to have gone a bit haywire!
A couple of days in the past I used to be in Suffolk for a brief vacation. It was chilly, moist and windy however in the future we braved the climate and walked alongside the seashore north from Aldeburgh lastly reaching a number of fairly battered seaside bungalows. However past them, on the opposite aspect of the dunes we entered one other world fully: a fantasy village that appeared to have escaped from an early Disney Movie about “Olde England.”
This was Thorpeness, a spot that was largely the imaginative and prescient of 1 man, G.Stuart Ogilvie, and I discovered myself smiling as we wandered spherical realising what enjoyable he will need to have had creating Britain’s first deliberate seaside resort.
In all probability probably the most well-known single constructing is a former water tower that offered storage for 50,000 gallons to produce the entire village. Water was pumped up by the close by windmill which was in-built 1803 in Aldringham simply down the street and moved to Thorpeness by Ogilvie in 1923. It may need been helpful however the tower was ugly so it was intentionally “disguised” as a cottage, albeit one perched 70 ft excessive within the bushes. The construction beneath the tank was boxed in to offer a house referred to as The Gazebo. Apparently Ogilvie had already disguised his personal water tower at Sizewell a mile up the coast as a dove-cote in 1908, utilizing the underside half as a carpenter’s workshop.
from The Sphere tenth Sept 1927
British Newspaper Archive
The Gazebo was first used by a good friend of his, Mrs Malcolm Mason, who was so impressed by the home that she wrote a poem for kids about it referred to as “The Home within the Clouds”. It accommodates the lower than memorable strains “The Fairies actually personal this home – or so the kids say – In actual fact, all of them of them moved in upon the self-same day.”
Mrs Mason is commonly described as an creator of youngsters’s books however in keeping with the British Library she solely wrote one guide: a group of verse for of youngsters referred to as shock shock “The Home within the Clouds.” [Sadly I can’t find a copy on-line].
The Home within the Clouds, Nov 2024
That title fitted the fantasy really feel of the village and it caught. In 1979, following the introduction of mains water to the village the tank was eliminated and the house used to create an enormous room. Each Thorpeness Windmill and The Home within the Clouds are listed at Grade 2 by Historic England and The Home within the Clouds is on the market to lease.
By 1929 the tank within the clouds wasn’t sufficiently big to produce demand and one other was constructed with its objective even higher hid by the architect William Gilmour Wilson. Often known as West Bar it truly resembles a big late medieval gatehouse however was constructed out of concrete and given a facade of timber and brick. It stands on an arch in the midst of a row of half-timbered mock Tudorbethan homes.
Not content material with one medieval fashion gateway, one other stands in the midst of the vary of the Margaret Ogilvie almshouses which have been constructed as employees lodging and completed in 1928. Though it resembles elements of Hampton Courtroom it too is concrete beneath the brick and timber facings. Certainly most of the village’s seemingly historically constructed cottages are additionally constructed of concrete and several other of probably the most important have been listed by Historic England.
So how did this extraordinary place come into being?
Within the 16thc there had been a secure delivery haven at Thorpe, however over the centuries this had silted up and the beforehand thriving settlement that had grown up close by declined into only a small, quiet scattered fishing village of 20 or 30 homes. In 1859 the native “massive home”, Sizewell Home, a number of miles alongside the coast was purchased, together with two and half acres, by Alexander Ogilvie in 1859 to function a vacation dwelling. He had made a fortune constructing railways and after he died in 1886 his widow Margaret continued to purchase land in order that by the point she died in 1908 the property stretched to over 6000 acres.
Thorpe and Sizewell Home have been inherited by their son Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie [always called Stuart], a lawyer [who didnt practice law] and a dramatist at coronary heart who had some successes on the West Finish stage. He set about remodeling the panorama and gardens round Sizewell, using as much as 20 gardeners however by 1910 his consideration switched to make Thorpe a stage set that got here to life.
As the 1912 guidebook defined: “By then Thorpe had develop into identified to a “devoted few as an excellent seaside Summer season resort. The nation gentry, retired army officers, well-known artists and well-to-do retailers from Norwich, Ipswich, and even London, have constructed and occupied bungalows on the sting of the rolling sand dunes overlooking the North Sea.”
That will need to have given him the concept of growing the assortment of small cottages that made up Thorpe on the time, and creating one thing designed particularly to cater for such higher center class vacation makers and no-one else. He acquired manorial rights over the ocean shore “to protect .. the facilities of Thorpeness for the only advantage of its residents [and] present an vital and highly effective weapon of defence towards trippers and different “undesirables”. Exclusivity and “class” have been clearly vital so in a later version of the guidebook he declared “there’ll by no means be a pier, cinemas or slide exhibits, plate glass or peacocking.”
G. Stuart Ogilvie. Picture scanned from `One Man’s Dream
Nonetheless a number of different issues additionally marked Ogilvie and his concepts out from the standard run of seaside resorts. The scheme was not speculated to look deliberate in any respect however to have been the pure piecemeal growth of the present settlement. It was to not be overtly industrial and as an alternative geared toward offering a good looking and tranquil setting, with actions and amenities to swimsuit each younger and outdated. His imaginative and prescient appears to have been closely influenced by Ebenezer Howard’s Backyard Cities of Tomorrow (1898) the place the perfect of city and nation fused harmoniously and led to a wholesome way of life for the inhabitants.
To assist him obtain his goal Ogilvie turned to an architect good friend W. G. Wilson [1856-1943] who had helped enlarge Sizewell Corridor , and added a number of pavilions and follies to the backyard. The pair then concerned one other architect, Forbes Glennie (b.1872, d.1950) and slowly lowly Thorpe was rebranded to grew to become trendy Thorpeness.
It was to be a spot of contradictions.
from the 1912 guidebook
Ogilvie’s scheme was visionary in its ambition, and from the outset Thorpeness was to be completely different. The homes weren’t on the market however for seasonal renting. They’d be totally furnished and outfitted, with lavish communal amenities and even home employees offered. Constructed by native builders they value between £298-380 every.
from the 1912 guidebook
Whereas every home was in a recognisably related fashion every was subtly completely different to its neighbours, and set amongst the pure panorama, with scrub allowed to develop between properties and open boundaries, giving them what backyard historians would in all probability recognise as a picturesque high quality.
from the 1912 guidebook
All this led, regardless of the visible variations and eccentricities, to a visible unity due to Ogilvie’s unwavering dedication for constructing high quality enhanced by panorama. That’s clear from the guidebook. There was a village inexperienced and taking part in fields, whereas, for instance, every of 1 group of bungalows “had its personal little backyard, with Lilliputian lawns and miniature borders homosexual with herbaceous and annual flowers.” Moreover the main native nursery Notcutts of Woodbridge equipped most of 25,000 bushes, units, flowering shrubs and creepers and by the point of his dying Ogilvie had planted about 1,000,000 bushes across the property.
His architectural imaginative and prescient at first sight seems very conservative. Most of the new buildings have been in mock Tudor and Jacobean kinds as had been trendy for a lot of the 19thc, notably with Arts and Crafts motion. There was an abundance of uncovered timber, complicated roofs of gables and eaves and chimneys, and irregular facades. Some even had a Dutch and even Spanish be aware about them. Nothing was fairly what it appeared as a result of whereas it regarded “conventional”, William Morris would in all probability have been horrified because it was, all underpinned by twentieth century know-how with most of the early homes made from poured concrete which was then rendered extra in conserving by being give a half-timbered end.
Though Thorpeness was by the ocean, and certainly some the homes ignored the ocean, the village was not deliberate round it. As a substitute it was deliberate spherical a man-made lake. This was created within the autumn of 1910 when the small Hundred river which runs via the world overflowed and flooded the silted up former haven. The flood impressed Ogilvie to dam the river completely, and so create a 64-acre lake, now often known as The Meare. It was intentionally extraordinarily shallow – not more than 2ft 6inches deep, and was dug out by hand by property staff on 8d a day. Additionally they created a collection of islands and put in sluices to regulate the water degree. The boathouse was put up in 1911 and the lake was formally declared open in July 1913.
Scan from Nation Life 9/4/82
There was a big fleet of boats of all kinds together with some small crusing boats which got names comparable to Purple Rover, Purple Emperor and Pink Pearl with sails to match. Many of those boats are nonetheless in use. It grew to become the scene of an annual Regatta and fireworks show which nonetheless continues immediately.
from the 1912 guidebook
Ogilvie revealed a guidebook in 1912 to advertise the enterprise and its from that that we are able to see how the fantasy actually kicks in. Considered one of his good associates was J.M.Barrie, creator of Peter Pan which had solely been revealed in 1904 and early promoting emphasised the similarity between the sights of The Meare and the adventures of J.M. Barrie’s fictional characters. The Guidebook described Thorpeness as “the house of Peter Pan”, and the lake a “kids’s paradise” of “sixty acres of secure and shallow water and decorative islands”.
from The Every day Mirror, sixteenth June 1913. British Newspaper Archive
The islands and the assorted sectors of The Meare have been named after characters and locations in widespread kids’s books, comparable to Wendy’s Home, the Crocodile from Peter Pan and the Spanish Primary, but in addition Pegotty’s Home from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Robinson Crusoe, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Puck of Pooks Hill by Rudyard Kipling.
from The Every day Mirror
twenty seventh August 1913, British Newspaper Archives
Such a give attention to kids and their pursuits is a very new idea in an period when it was not normal to offer any weight to their leisure wants or certainly these of households.
But it surely wasn’t all for kids and Ogilvie additionally referred to as it a “Temple of Tranquillity, the place the Soul of over-civilised Man could escape the thraldom of the Nice Cities and discover its Self alone with Nature and at one with God.”
from The Every day Mirror August thirtieth 1913 British Newspaper Archives
What that meant in follow was that in addition to the sights of the seashore, the Meare and the gorgeous Suffolk countryside, vacation makers may participate in a full programme of dances, quizzes and different actions on the Nation Membership.
There was a circulating library, tennis courts, a croquet garden, bowling inexperienced and a golf course was additionally deliberate. Sadly WW1 broke out earlier than work obtained underway and it wasn’t opened till 1922 on what was initially barren heathland, though it was quickly planted up with bushes.
from The Every day Mirror twenty fourth July 1929
The resort continued to develop boosted by the opening of a small station – Thorpeness Halt – in 1914, though Nice Japanese Railways [which had been partly built by Alexander Ogilvie] did it on a budget utilizing redundant railway carriages because the ready room.
The station lastly closed in 1966 – thanks Dr Beeching.
By the point the rail line opened all the primary part of housing was accomplished and had been let. Nonetheless this was on the eve of the Nice Conflict and deliberate future developments got here to a halt in August 1914 when hostilities broke out. The military occupied the grounds of Sizewell Corridor and there was little out there labour as so many males enlisted
After the conflict was over work started once more, with Ogilvie’s dedication to offering fascinating public areas remaining clear. A big extension was deliberate to the north of the present settlement with lengthy tree-lined avenues with a rotunda and areas of garden linking the brand new housing to the ocean. Sadly it was by no means accomplished.
Nonetheless different growth continued and Thorpeness grew to become “an architectural crucible for experimentation”, with, for instance, a concrete-brick-making machine imported from Australia to make blocks from seashore shingle, and the usage of “vermin-resistant supplies comparable to asbestos.” In all about 100 homes of various sizes have been constructed. Virtually all of the labour used have been ex-servicemen and so they additionally shaped nearly all of the employees. However nonetheless the category aspect continued to dominate with The Sphere journal [14th May 1938] reporting that “all charabancs, pierrots and live performance events are rightly barred.”
Constructing continued after Ogilvie’s dying in 1932, with the church completed in 1936 and at last a big residence block, The Headlands, going up in 1937. He had additionally deliberate so as to add a resort with room for greater than 400 friends and a half-timbered procuring arcade primarily based on The Rows in Chester, though these have been by no means constructed both as a result of monetary pressures have been taking their toll.
Thorpeness stood the concept of a conventional village on its head. Whereas most grew up across the manor home and church and sat in the midst of working agricultural landscapes Thorpeness was the alternative. The village revolved across the panorama of leisure, with its centres being the nation membership, golf membership and The Meare.
Regardless of appearances Ogilvie was not severely rich however he doesn’t appear to have regarded Thorpeness as a spot to make enormous earnings. Certainly it’s thought he in all probability solely broke even on his investments, and was typically in debt. Sizewell Corridor burned nearly to the bottom in 1920 and needed to be rebuilt, and regularly via the late Nineteen Twenties not solely did lots of his schemes should be deserted due to scarcity of funds however land and property needed to be offered off as leasehold as effectively, though the property tried to take care of growth high quality via the usage of strict covenants. Worse nonetheless he needed to cope with his second spouse who by all accounts will need to have been a really troublesome lady and ended up being paid to go away! [See One Man’s Dream for all the gossip!]
The newly constructed Golf Membership, c.1930 scanned from One Man’s Dream [ full ref at the end]
Apologies the formatting of this put up appears to have gone a bit haywire!
A couple of days in the past I used to be in Suffolk for a brief vacation. It was chilly, moist and windy however in the future we braved the climate and walked alongside the seashore north from Aldeburgh lastly reaching a number of fairly battered seaside bungalows. However past them, on the opposite aspect of the dunes we entered one other world fully: a fantasy village that appeared to have escaped from an early Disney Movie about “Olde England.”
This was Thorpeness, a spot that was largely the imaginative and prescient of 1 man, G.Stuart Ogilvie, and I discovered myself smiling as we wandered spherical realising what enjoyable he will need to have had creating Britain’s first deliberate seaside resort.
In all probability probably the most well-known single constructing is a former water tower that offered storage for 50,000 gallons to produce the entire village. Water was pumped up by the close by windmill which was in-built 1803 in Aldringham simply down the street and moved to Thorpeness by Ogilvie in 1923. It may need been helpful however the tower was ugly so it was intentionally “disguised” as a cottage, albeit one perched 70 ft excessive within the bushes. The construction beneath the tank was boxed in to offer a house referred to as The Gazebo. Apparently Ogilvie had already disguised his personal water tower at Sizewell a mile up the coast as a dove-cote in 1908, utilizing the underside half as a carpenter’s workshop.
from The Sphere tenth Sept 1927
British Newspaper Archive
The Gazebo was first used by a good friend of his, Mrs Malcolm Mason, who was so impressed by the home that she wrote a poem for kids about it referred to as “The Home within the Clouds”. It accommodates the lower than memorable strains “The Fairies actually personal this home – or so the kids say – In actual fact, all of them of them moved in upon the self-same day.”
Mrs Mason is commonly described as an creator of youngsters’s books however in keeping with the British Library she solely wrote one guide: a group of verse for of youngsters referred to as shock shock “The Home within the Clouds.” [Sadly I can’t find a copy on-line].
The Home within the Clouds, Nov 2024
That title fitted the fantasy really feel of the village and it caught. In 1979, following the introduction of mains water to the village the tank was eliminated and the house used to create an enormous room. Each Thorpeness Windmill and The Home within the Clouds are listed at Grade 2 by Historic England and The Home within the Clouds is on the market to lease.
By 1929 the tank within the clouds wasn’t sufficiently big to produce demand and one other was constructed with its objective even higher hid by the architect William Gilmour Wilson. Often known as West Bar it truly resembles a big late medieval gatehouse however was constructed out of concrete and given a facade of timber and brick. It stands on an arch in the midst of a row of half-timbered mock Tudorbethan homes.
Not content material with one medieval fashion gateway, one other stands in the midst of the vary of the Margaret Ogilvie almshouses which have been constructed as employees lodging and completed in 1928. Though it resembles elements of Hampton Courtroom it too is concrete beneath the brick and timber facings. Certainly most of the village’s seemingly historically constructed cottages are additionally constructed of concrete and several other of probably the most important have been listed by Historic England.
So how did this extraordinary place come into being?
Within the 16thc there had been a secure delivery haven at Thorpe, however over the centuries this had silted up and the beforehand thriving settlement that had grown up close by declined into only a small, quiet scattered fishing village of 20 or 30 homes. In 1859 the native “massive home”, Sizewell Home, a number of miles alongside the coast was purchased, together with two and half acres, by Alexander Ogilvie in 1859 to function a vacation dwelling. He had made a fortune constructing railways and after he died in 1886 his widow Margaret continued to purchase land in order that by the point she died in 1908 the property stretched to over 6000 acres.
Thorpe and Sizewell Home have been inherited by their son Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie [always called Stuart], a lawyer [who didnt practice law] and a dramatist at coronary heart who had some successes on the West Finish stage. He set about remodeling the panorama and gardens round Sizewell, using as much as 20 gardeners however by 1910 his consideration switched to make Thorpe a stage set that got here to life.
As the 1912 guidebook defined: “By then Thorpe had develop into identified to a “devoted few as an excellent seaside Summer season resort. The nation gentry, retired army officers, well-known artists and well-to-do retailers from Norwich, Ipswich, and even London, have constructed and occupied bungalows on the sting of the rolling sand dunes overlooking the North Sea.”
That will need to have given him the concept of growing the assortment of small cottages that made up Thorpe on the time, and creating one thing designed particularly to cater for such higher center class vacation makers and no-one else. He acquired manorial rights over the ocean shore “to protect .. the facilities of Thorpeness for the only advantage of its residents [and] present an vital and highly effective weapon of defence towards trippers and different “undesirables”. Exclusivity and “class” have been clearly vital so in a later version of the guidebook he declared “there’ll by no means be a pier, cinemas or slide exhibits, plate glass or peacocking.”
G. Stuart Ogilvie. Picture scanned from `One Man’s Dream
Nonetheless a number of different issues additionally marked Ogilvie and his concepts out from the standard run of seaside resorts. The scheme was not speculated to look deliberate in any respect however to have been the pure piecemeal growth of the present settlement. It was to not be overtly industrial and as an alternative geared toward offering a good looking and tranquil setting, with actions and amenities to swimsuit each younger and outdated. His imaginative and prescient appears to have been closely influenced by Ebenezer Howard’s Backyard Cities of Tomorrow (1898) the place the perfect of city and nation fused harmoniously and led to a wholesome way of life for the inhabitants.
To assist him obtain his goal Ogilvie turned to an architect good friend W. G. Wilson [1856-1943] who had helped enlarge Sizewell Corridor , and added a number of pavilions and follies to the backyard. The pair then concerned one other architect, Forbes Glennie (b.1872, d.1950) and slowly lowly Thorpe was rebranded to grew to become trendy Thorpeness.
It was to be a spot of contradictions.
from the 1912 guidebook
Ogilvie’s scheme was visionary in its ambition, and from the outset Thorpeness was to be completely different. The homes weren’t on the market however for seasonal renting. They’d be totally furnished and outfitted, with lavish communal amenities and even home employees offered. Constructed by native builders they value between £298-380 every.
from the 1912 guidebook
Whereas every home was in a recognisably related fashion every was subtly completely different to its neighbours, and set amongst the pure panorama, with scrub allowed to develop between properties and open boundaries, giving them what backyard historians would in all probability recognise as a picturesque high quality.
from the 1912 guidebook
All this led, regardless of the visible variations and eccentricities, to a visible unity due to Ogilvie’s unwavering dedication for constructing high quality enhanced by panorama. That’s clear from the guidebook. There was a village inexperienced and taking part in fields, whereas, for instance, every of 1 group of bungalows “had its personal little backyard, with Lilliputian lawns and miniature borders homosexual with herbaceous and annual flowers.” Moreover the main native nursery Notcutts of Woodbridge equipped most of 25,000 bushes, units, flowering shrubs and creepers and by the point of his dying Ogilvie had planted about 1,000,000 bushes across the property.
His architectural imaginative and prescient at first sight seems very conservative. Most of the new buildings have been in mock Tudor and Jacobean kinds as had been trendy for a lot of the 19thc, notably with Arts and Crafts motion. There was an abundance of uncovered timber, complicated roofs of gables and eaves and chimneys, and irregular facades. Some even had a Dutch and even Spanish be aware about them. Nothing was fairly what it appeared as a result of whereas it regarded “conventional”, William Morris would in all probability have been horrified because it was, all underpinned by twentieth century know-how with most of the early homes made from poured concrete which was then rendered extra in conserving by being give a half-timbered end.
Though Thorpeness was by the ocean, and certainly some the homes ignored the ocean, the village was not deliberate round it. As a substitute it was deliberate spherical a man-made lake. This was created within the autumn of 1910 when the small Hundred river which runs via the world overflowed and flooded the silted up former haven. The flood impressed Ogilvie to dam the river completely, and so create a 64-acre lake, now often known as The Meare. It was intentionally extraordinarily shallow – not more than 2ft 6inches deep, and was dug out by hand by property staff on 8d a day. Additionally they created a collection of islands and put in sluices to regulate the water degree. The boathouse was put up in 1911 and the lake was formally declared open in July 1913.
Scan from Nation Life 9/4/82
There was a big fleet of boats of all kinds together with some small crusing boats which got names comparable to Purple Rover, Purple Emperor and Pink Pearl with sails to match. Many of those boats are nonetheless in use. It grew to become the scene of an annual Regatta and fireworks show which nonetheless continues immediately.
from the 1912 guidebook
Ogilvie revealed a guidebook in 1912 to advertise the enterprise and its from that that we are able to see how the fantasy actually kicks in. Considered one of his good associates was J.M.Barrie, creator of Peter Pan which had solely been revealed in 1904 and early promoting emphasised the similarity between the sights of The Meare and the adventures of J.M. Barrie’s fictional characters. The Guidebook described Thorpeness as “the house of Peter Pan”, and the lake a “kids’s paradise” of “sixty acres of secure and shallow water and decorative islands”.
from The Every day Mirror, sixteenth June 1913. British Newspaper Archive
The islands and the assorted sectors of The Meare have been named after characters and locations in widespread kids’s books, comparable to Wendy’s Home, the Crocodile from Peter Pan and the Spanish Primary, but in addition Pegotty’s Home from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Robinson Crusoe, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Puck of Pooks Hill by Rudyard Kipling.
from The Every day Mirror
twenty seventh August 1913, British Newspaper Archives
Such a give attention to kids and their pursuits is a very new idea in an period when it was not normal to offer any weight to their leisure wants or certainly these of households.
But it surely wasn’t all for kids and Ogilvie additionally referred to as it a “Temple of Tranquillity, the place the Soul of over-civilised Man could escape the thraldom of the Nice Cities and discover its Self alone with Nature and at one with God.”
from The Every day Mirror August thirtieth 1913 British Newspaper Archives
What that meant in follow was that in addition to the sights of the seashore, the Meare and the gorgeous Suffolk countryside, vacation makers may participate in a full programme of dances, quizzes and different actions on the Nation Membership.
There was a circulating library, tennis courts, a croquet garden, bowling inexperienced and a golf course was additionally deliberate. Sadly WW1 broke out earlier than work obtained underway and it wasn’t opened till 1922 on what was initially barren heathland, though it was quickly planted up with bushes.
from The Every day Mirror twenty fourth July 1929
The resort continued to develop boosted by the opening of a small station – Thorpeness Halt – in 1914, though Nice Japanese Railways [which had been partly built by Alexander Ogilvie] did it on a budget utilizing redundant railway carriages because the ready room.
The station lastly closed in 1966 – thanks Dr Beeching.
By the point the rail line opened all the primary part of housing was accomplished and had been let. Nonetheless this was on the eve of the Nice Conflict and deliberate future developments got here to a halt in August 1914 when hostilities broke out. The military occupied the grounds of Sizewell Corridor and there was little out there labour as so many males enlisted
After the conflict was over work started once more, with Ogilvie’s dedication to offering fascinating public areas remaining clear. A big extension was deliberate to the north of the present settlement with lengthy tree-lined avenues with a rotunda and areas of garden linking the brand new housing to the ocean. Sadly it was by no means accomplished.
Nonetheless different growth continued and Thorpeness grew to become “an architectural crucible for experimentation”, with, for instance, a concrete-brick-making machine imported from Australia to make blocks from seashore shingle, and the usage of “vermin-resistant supplies comparable to asbestos.” In all about 100 homes of various sizes have been constructed. Virtually all of the labour used have been ex-servicemen and so they additionally shaped nearly all of the employees. However nonetheless the category aspect continued to dominate with The Sphere journal [14th May 1938] reporting that “all charabancs, pierrots and live performance events are rightly barred.”
Constructing continued after Ogilvie’s dying in 1932, with the church completed in 1936 and at last a big residence block, The Headlands, going up in 1937. He had additionally deliberate so as to add a resort with room for greater than 400 friends and a half-timbered procuring arcade primarily based on The Rows in Chester, though these have been by no means constructed both as a result of monetary pressures have been taking their toll.
Thorpeness stood the concept of a conventional village on its head. Whereas most grew up across the manor home and church and sat in the midst of working agricultural landscapes Thorpeness was the alternative. The village revolved across the panorama of leisure, with its centres being the nation membership, golf membership and The Meare.
Regardless of appearances Ogilvie was not severely rich however he doesn’t appear to have regarded Thorpeness as a spot to make enormous earnings. Certainly it’s thought he in all probability solely broke even on his investments, and was typically in debt. Sizewell Corridor burned nearly to the bottom in 1920 and needed to be rebuilt, and regularly via the late Nineteen Twenties not solely did lots of his schemes should be deserted due to scarcity of funds however land and property needed to be offered off as leasehold as effectively, though the property tried to take care of growth high quality via the usage of strict covenants. Worse nonetheless he needed to cope with his second spouse who by all accounts will need to have been a really troublesome lady and ended up being paid to go away! [See One Man’s Dream for all the gossip!]
The newly constructed Golf Membership, c.1930 scanned from One Man’s Dream [ full ref at the end]
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