All along the east Norfolk coast the sea is hungry for the land. The barley fields go right up to the shore, trying to ignore it, but this does them no good, for much has been lost, and will continue to be so. Here just to the south of Happisburgh was the parish of Eccles-on-Sea, and it had a round towered church which fell into disuse at the start of the 17th Century. Blomefield recorded that a storm in 1604 had wrecked the church along with much of the village. The parish was united with that of Hempstead, the parish church of which is almost a mile inland and became the church of the new united parish. When Ladbrooke drew Eccles church in 1823 it was in low ruins apart from its tower, but there were still sand dunes between the churchyard and the sea. However, during the course of the century the ruins were lost to the waves, and only the tower remained. It became something of a tourist attraction, and a number of of late 19th Century photographs of it survive. In common with many East Anglian round towers, the lower stages were probably 12th Century, and then in the 15th Century an octagonal bell stage was added. Some 19th Century images of the remains from the Norfolk County Council collection can be seen at the bottom of this page, including Ladbrooke's drawing. The tower finally collapsed in a winter storm in 1895.

Neil Batcock notes that a number of storms over the next twenty years completely exposed the church foundations and even the churchyard, on one occasion in 1912 neatly delivering thirty-eight skeletons to the surface. It had been a two-celled church, with a south aisle which was probably added at the same time that the tower was crowned. Batcock was writing in the 1990s, when some remains were still regularly exposed by storms. In 1987 the base of the round tower was still clear for everyone to see, although some ten years later Pevsner's revising editor Bill Wilson could record nothing more than two heaps of flint on the beach no bigger than two beginner's sandcastles. Paul Harley, a friend of this site, generously allows me to share with you some photographs he took in 1991 when the remains of the tower were exposed after a storm, along with a splendidly gruesome skull-less skeleton. But since then new offshore reefs have been put in to try to protect the coastline from heavy waves, and so it seems unlikely that the remains will be exposed again. Although as Paul says, you never know with this coast. But for now, all there is to see as you stand on the sea wall is the churning of the waves.

Simon Knott, December 2022

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