Cromer Official Guide, 1965 (Part 1)

You can learn a lot about a seaside resort's history from old holiday guides. You can also learn a lot about the tourist trade of the time.

This Cromer and District Official Guide from 1965 has a potted history of the town including information on lifeboat Coxwain Henry Blogg. However, the advertisements for guesthouses and attractions reveal small details about how much the resort has altered since the mid 1960s, and also how little it has changed. In this blog post I tell you how to get there.

 

Cromer's East Beach, long before the Rocket House Cafe
and Henry Blogg Museum were built

Getting There

The guide quotes from a local hotel proprietor who points out how the trade in 1965 changed across the year - from the elderly visitors who holidayed off-season, to married couples with young children in May, families with school-aged children in July, and young couples with prams until September. After the latter had left, the elderly returned once again. I imagine it is much the same today, with the peak tourist season being during the school holidays.

The guide also informs us that motor cars and holidays with pay had brought Cromer's delights 'within range of a far larger number of people than could reach them sixty years [previously]' (page 17).

A list of approximate distances between Cromer and cities around the United Kingdom shows that the publishers were hoping to attract motorists from as far away as Bristol (226 miles) and as near as Norwich (25 miles). It boasts that although ‘the quaint old streets in the centre are very narrow, the town has parks for 5,000 cars’ (page 16).

In an age when a large proportion of people relied on public transport rather than owned a car, the advertisements for coach services give a good idea about the hometowns of Cromer's customers.

Premier Travel supplied express coaches from Bedford, St. Neots and Huntingon Chatteris. Sheffield United Tours brought holidaymakers from Worksop, Sheffield and Rotherham. Trent Motor Traction Company carried people from Nottingham, Grantham, Derby, Loughborough and Mansfield.

The guide also gives an insight into rail links to this North Norfolk resort, with 'good train services of British Railways [connecting] Cromer with the rest of the country' including express trains to London and also services from Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Leicester and Birmingham. The list gives a good record of some of the main towns where Cromer's holidaymakers came from (page 35).

Incidentally the same page informs the holidaymaker about the location of Cromer’s water supply – a deep well at the nearby village of Metton. How many holiday guides include this type of information in 2016?!

In further posts I will reveal more about Cromer’s attractions and tell you where you could have stayed in 1965.

Rocket House Gardens, Brunswick Terrace and the Gangway behind. This view has changed very little, although the houses to the left have been stripped of their ivy.

All quotes and selected images from Cromer and District Official Guide, 1965, published by the Cromer Advertising Association, Urban District Council.

Latest Journal Article: ‘Representations of the family in postwar British amateur film: family histories in the Lane and Scrutton collection at the East Anglian Film Archive’, in The History of the Family journal

Here is an overview of my latest journal article for those interested in:

• home movies


• representations of the family


• leisure


• postwar social history


• national identity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the construction of the postwar British family in amateur film with reference to
the Sidney Lane and Cecil Scrutton collection held at the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), particularly the films covering 1948 – 1961.

Heather Norris Nicholson argues that home movies contribute to ‘an understanding of leisure and visual- related practices of consumption as well as the social processes by which people came
to give themselves, and others, identities’ in the mid-twentieth century (Nicholson, H. N. [2004]. At Home and Abroad with Cine Enthusiasts: Regional Amateur Filmmaking and Visualizing the Mediterranean, ca. 1928 – 1962’. Geojournal,
49, 323–333).

By considering the social and historical contexts in which these home movies were produced, and using accompanying notes by one of the filmmaker’s sons, the leisure time films of
Lane and Scrutton can be analysed in order to understand how the amateur cine hobby ideologically constructed family, community and national identity in postwar Britain.

The images of Christmas parties, daytrips and holidays in these films reveal much about this particular family, and are therefore very illuminating to the social historian and film scholar of
today.

My journal article is based on some research I carried out at the East Anglian Film Archive a couple of years ago. Whilst there I viewed the birthday parties, day trips and holidays that the Lanes and Scruttons had filmed in Norfolk and other parts of Britain. I also got to know the family’s history in the 1950s, due to the collection’s reminiscences recorded in a document by one of the filmmakers’ sons.

Family collections such as this provide a fascinating insight into social history, and also how people
represented their leisure activities in amateur film: The cine hobby itself being a leisure pastime – popular with families who could afford it – in the postwar period.

Link to the article / abstract

THE NORFOLK MURALS OF JOHN MORAY-SMITH

After a visit to Cromer Museum earlier this year to see the John Moray-Smith seaside mural (detail above), a subsequent Twitter conversation with the museum prompted me to look for some of Moray-Smith’s other murals around Norwich.

Moray-Smith was an Italian traveller who married a Norwich woman, Katrina Moray-Smith and took her name, after coming to England as a prisoner in the First World War. He worked for Watney-Mann’s Norwich Brewery in the 1940s and 1950’s.

Cromer Museum houses three of Moray-Smith’s plaster relief artworks from 1951 including a portrait of the famous Lifeboat coxwain Henry Blogg, a mural of a 19^th century lifeboat launch, and the aforementioned beachscape. The two murals were taken from the Ship Hotel in Church Street, Cromer, which closed in 1984.

Detail from Cromer seaside mural

Henry Blogg

I’ve only included some small details of the seaside mural here, as I recommended you to visit the museum itself to fully appreciate the scale and quality of the work.

Three of Moray-Smith’s artworks can be found at pubs in the centre of Norwich, which I visited this summer. 

The Coachmaker's Arms

The Coachmaker’s Arms, St. Stephen’s Road, NR1 3SP, has a representation of St. Stephen’s Gate and dates from 1937.

The Berstrete Gates

The Berstrete Gates, Ber Street, NR1 3EN, similarly shows a picture (1937) of some long-gone city gates from Norwich’s city walls.

Grazing sheep in The Woolpack

The Woolpack in Golden Ball Street, NR1 3EH, houses the most impressive collection of Moray-Smith plaques (from 1938). There were originally six pictures illustrating different aspects of the wool trade from sheep grazing, to shearing, market trading and export, five of which can be found in the pub today. Go and have a look at them whilst supping some local Woodforde's beer.







I later returned to Norwich and went to look for the mural at the Prince of Denmark, Denmark Road, NR3 4JQ. The size of this mural presents an impressive figure which can be seen easily from across the road and from the path outside the pub. 

I also went to see the Norwich Panorama which is displayed at The Maid's Head Hotel, Tombland. It truly is a stunning piece of artwork and a great tribute to a fine city!

Information taken from Cromer Museum and the Norwich Society.