St Mary’s, Happisburgh

Open daily 9.30am to 4pm.

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Wheelchair accessible

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Rood screen

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Stand in the churchyard and listen to the sound of the waves rolling in. St Mary’s Church is set on high ground between the village and the sea. The approach from Walcott offers a dramatic view. The seamark tower is 110 ft high, second only in height to Cromer. This explains why it was bombed in World War Two. The west window is vast. The church dates from the 15th Century and underwent an extensive restoration in the 19th Century. The mound in the churchyard is in fact the mass grave of 119 crew members who died when the HMS Invincible sank off the coast here in 1801. The ship was on its way to join Admiral Lord Nelson’s fleet.

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Norfolk, Nelson’s County

Horatio Nelson was born in the small, windswept Norfolk village of Burnham Thorpe on 29th September 1758. The North Sea lies only one and a half miles away, its lapping and pounding providing the soundtrack to Horatio's first twelve years of life. The Nelson family moved into the rectory in Burnham Thorpe in 1755 (the original building is no longer there). Horatio's father, Edmund, served as rector of the Burnhams, the group of villages taking their name from the river Burn. Nelson's mother, Catherine, was distantly related to Britain's first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, and Horatio was named after his godfather Horatio Walpole 1st Earl of Orford. They had eleven children, Horatio being the sixth, and eight of them survived infancy. Burnham Overy Harbour was the young Horatio's link to the wider world as it was from here that he was captivated by sights of ocean-going vessels and interacted with merchant seamen.

Six great seamark churches on the Norfolk coast

The soaring tower and spire of St Mary’s has guided mariners through the dangerous tides and shifting sandbanks of the Wash for centuries. It is just one of a series of lofty medieval churches strung out along the Norfolk coast from Yarmouth to Lynn that still appear on modern nautical charts.

St Mary’s, Happisburgh

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Norfolk, Nelson’s County

Six great seamark churches on the Norfolk coast

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St Mary’s, Happisburgh

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As featured in

Norfolk, Nelson’s County

Six great seamark churches on the Norfolk coast

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