When Derrick Bowler and his wife moved to Trimingham on the Norfolk coast they thought they would leave the village “feet first” after being told they had 100 years before their “dream home” would be lost to the sea.
The couple moved to the village in 2011 with Bowler’s wife hoping to replicate her fond memories of going to the beach every day when she lived in Cape Town, South Africa.
Over the past 20 years dozens of properties in the village have become uninhabitable in a battle of man versus nature with the most recent home demolished in May 2024.
“We’ve had to revise our opinions and our thoughts because of the coastal erosion, but it’s not something we think about every day – you would go mad otherwise,” he said.
Built in 1780, the Bowlers’ home was sold to the couple as the “house of their dreams”.
In recent years Bowler said North Norfolk District Council told them the property was expected to be a victim of coastal erosion in about 20 years’ time.
When they first moved in, he said there was a 45-degree slope you could walk down to access the water’s edge, however now, it looks as if “a giant has taken two big bites” out of the cliff.
He said: “In comparison to the inhabitants of Hemsby and Happisburgh, we are so lucky. We don’t think about it too much.”
