It smashed into the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast destroying everything in its path. The storm hit with such devastating force on that Saturday night in 1953. I don't know if it's true and I have never put it to the test, but I have never forgotten that story. He also told me that if you came out to Salthouse on a cold stormy January night you could sometimes hear the old church bell tolling out at sea. I asked my dad where they came from and he told me they were the remains of the old Salthouse village, which was swept into the sea by a great flood. These were the remains of old red brick houses. We started to go out on Sunday trips to the seaside and it was while we were walking the beach of Salthouse on the Norfolk coast that I saw bricks rising from the sand. As my mum and dad both went out to work we could afford to run our own transport. It was in 1956 that my dad bought a Royal Enfield combination of motorbike and sidecar. What meteorologists sometimes call 'the perfect storm'.īoats and trucks help the people of Gorleston to safe and dry ground. With the wind and tide working together this sent a wall of water charging down the North Sea. A weather front far out in the Atlantic had combined with wind and strong tides coming from the north at over 100 mph. I was snug and warm in our council house in Argyle Street in Norwich, drinking hot Ovaltine and sitting by our roasting warm coal fire as the cold January night closed in.īut just 20 miles away on the Norfolk coast events were very different for so many towns and seaside villages. I was just four-and-a-half years of age and living with my mum, dad and brother Terry in 1953 when the worst peace time disaster in 20th century Britain came to our many Norfolk seaside resorts on the night of Saturday January 31.Īs a four year old I did not know anything about what happened.

Raymond Aldous used our Storymaker programme to recall the events of Januwhen a devastating storm lashed the coastal towns of Norfolk.Īll pictures © Eastern Daily Press reproduced with kind permission.

The perfect stormy torrent