'the Patch' A House At East End Of Overstrand, 1920s

A Memory of Overstrand.

Francis Frith must have been standing almost on the doorstep of a grand-looking house called 'The Patch' when he photographed 'Overstrand, Hotel East 1921' (Ref 71000).

In 1916, 1921, 1923 and 1924 my Great Aunts Lily and Olive sent postcards to their family in Oxfordshire from 'The Patch'. On one postcard (Ref 70999 'Overstrand 1921') Lily marks 'The Patch' with an 'X' - just east of the Overstrand Hotel - commenting that the house was very close to the sea.

Why did Lily and Olive, who were not wealthy women, travel so far for their annual holidays? Overstrand was certainly bracing compared with mellow Oxfordshire.

I'm trying to find out more about 'The Patch'. Sadly, Census returns don't name all the individual properties. Overstrand's excellent information board notes that the five houses east of the Overstrand Hotel were uninhabitable by the late 1930s and eventually fell into the sea - except for one, which was dismantled and rebuilt in Cromer. Interestingly, the 1939 Register shows a house in Norwich Road, Cromer, called 'The Patch' but so far I have been unable to identify it.