Qualla: Walton-on-the-Naze

Walton-on-the-Naze: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PAUL FARMER, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a Latin inscription on a Canon's stall in St Paul's Cathedral that reads Consumpta per Mare - consumed by the sea. It commemorates a parish church that fell into the North Sea on the night of 22 July 1798. A Sunday service had been held there earlier that day. The medieval village of Walton-on-the-Naze, which once stood miles inland, is now entirely underwater. The North Sea here advances at roughly two metres per year. The pillboxes that defended the cliffs in 1940 now sit on the beach below them, like teeth that have fallen out of a giant's mouth.

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Image: PAUL FARMER | CC BY-SA 2.0

Walton-on-the-Naze: Naze, Tower, Erosion

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Glyn Baker, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name Naze comes from Old English naess, meaning a headland or ness. The Hanoverian-era Naze Tower at the cliff edge was built as a sea mark to help ships navigate this otherwise featureless coast. During the Second World War the headland became a radar station, with some aeri...

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Image: Glyn Baker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Walton-on-the-Naze: Two Million Years on the Beach

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robin Lucas, CC BY-SA 2.0. The cliffs are a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The base is London Clay, 54 million years old. The top is sandy Red Crag, 2 million years old. The London Clay yields pyritized fossil wood and, unusually, fossil bird bones - in 1998 David Attenborough estimated over 600 bird...

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Image: Robin Lucas | CC BY-SA 2.0

Walton-on-the-Naze: Two Piers, Both Lost

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first Walton pier was built in 1830, one of the earliest in Britain, a 150-foot wooden landing stage for goods and passengers from steamers. It was lengthened to 330 feet in 1848. A storm in January 1880 destroyed it. The second pier opened in 1880 and also failed to last. Th...

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Walton-on-the-Naze: Fiction, Pop, Top Gear

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Huguet, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walton has accumulated a strangely wide cultural footprint for a town of under 7,000 people. Arthur Ransome set Secret Water, his Swallows and Amazons novel, in the maze of creeks around Hamford Water. Blackadder Goes Forth has Captain Blackadder mock Lieutenant George's family w...

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Image: Simon Huguet | CC BY-SA 2.0

Walton-on-the-Naze: The View from the Sky

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Facey, CC BY-SA 2.0. From altitude, Walton-on-the-Naze is the distinctive squared-off headland between Hamford Water and the open sea, the last hard land before Suffolk. The pier extends prominently south. The Naze Tower is a small white needle on the cliff edge. Below the cliffs, geometric groynes r...

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Image: Peter Facey | CC BY-SA 2.0