The Village 1909, Dunwich
The Village 1909, Dunwich Ref: 62043
Memories of The Village 1909, Dunwich
Be the first to add a memory of The Village 1909, Dunwich
Dunwich & local memories
Read and share memories of Dunwich and Suffolk inspired by Frith photos.
The Ghost at The Ship
My parents owned and ran The Ship Inn from 1960 to 1975. My father a retired soldier and wartime paratrooper had taken early retirement to buy the business, then called The Barne Arms Hotel after the estate. The new Inn sign was based on the Blue Peter logo from the BBC Children's programme (from whom he'd got permission to use a similar but not identical design). As boys, my brother and I shared an attic room. Shortly after I had left to go to the Army in about 1969/70 my brother had experienced a ghost in the attic room. Waking, he'd found what he described as a woman sitting beside his bed, grey in colour. As he woke, she'd risen, turned and seemed to walk through the wall beside him. Of course no-one believed him. Years later, in about 1998, my wife and I stayed with the owner, Annie Marshlain, at The Ship. She'd been a friend of my parents, having come over several years with friends to work... Read more
The Rubble on The Beach
I spent my teenage years in Dunwich, and in retrospect they were wonderful. Freedom, long walks, the beach and sea, cliffs, marshes and the old tank defences from WWII. My best friend Justin North, who lived at 'Marshside' opposite me at The Ship, and I spent hours during those years, roaming, swimming, canoeing, making carts to career down the hill from the monastery, and resurrecting a storm damaged painter's punt washed ashore to row to Walberswick on the irrigation rivers behind the dunes. Although All Saints had fallen off the cliff long before we were born, some of the cemetery remained on the cliff top, including numerous unmarked pauper's graves. Pieces of masonry and rubble still lay at the foot of the cliff, now covered frequently by the tides and the pebbles, but occasionally washed clean for brief periods allowing us to scramble over them. Our most interesting times however were after the neap tides in the Spring when high seas would wash away more of the... Read more
Dunwich Monastery Gateway
My earliest memory of Greyfriars in Dunwich was probably driving down the hill in my grandfather's old car in 1960 as he brought me to my new home at The Barne Arms Hotel. I had been at boarding school at Dollar in Scotland, and my grandfather had met me off the train in London and driven me along the tortuous roads (including the old A12) to Dunwich. Descending the hill, just before St James' Street opened out, the ruins on the right hand side seemed portentious, as I loved anything old and historic, and this was certainly both. Glimpses of the ruined buildings could be seen through the gate, and later I was to frequently circumnavigate the whole monastery, it's seaward wall being the final outer wall of the ancient city, and the gap between wall and clifftop getting shorter every year.
The first year I lived in Dunwich, there was I think, the last of the pilgrimages to the Monastery, with a religious procession led up the street,... Read more
