This one visit to Cromer Museum has helpfully produced enough material to sustain the blog for a couple of days. Museums are useful like that, they organise all the exhibits and history and I merely have to stand nearby taking photographs before later presenting the whole arrangement as organised cultural research. All rather lovely.
Anyway, this is a watercolour of East Beach by Caroline Gray, painted in 1829, and it shows Cromer’s shoreline with the town rising behind it. The church tower is immediately recognisable and the jetty built between 1822 and 1823 is visible. This was Cromer before all the tourists came for the day to eat their fish and chips before meandering along the pier and commenting negatively on the parking charges.
The back of the painting carries the inscription: “‘Twas here my careless Childhood stray’d, a stranger yet to pain”, although the museum notes that it’s not clear whether the artist wrote those words, but it’s a nice little addition. But it shows Cromer from another age and I rather like that.