A Monthly Publication

Dick Melton

Well now, another year has gone by in Sunny Hunny! When I first started writing for the newsletter, four years ago, I thought whatever shall I write about each month but I need not have worried because, with the help of the people of Hunstanton, there is always plenty to say!

On the 13^th October at a meeting at the Town Hall it was said that a small piece of one of the legs of the Hunstanton Pier, now placed in a small memorial garden on the Lower Green near the promenade, is the last remains of the old pier. I don’t think so, many people who spent a lot of time on the beach before 1978 can remember that the beach under the pier was covered in rocks – there are no rocks there now. Over the last 31 years tons and tons of sand have been washed in over those rocks and I think people will go on finding pieces of the pier for many years to come.

People often ask me why it is that you can only go through the gates to the Downs and Hunstanton Park on a Thursday. Well, as far as I know, it is an old bye-law laid down many years ago by Le Strange family. The same bye-law applies to Homefields Lane, but in this case no-one takes any notice of it. There are also some roads in Hunstanton, like Alexandra Road, that are still private but this does not mean that the general public cannot use these roads.

Now what about the Princess Theatre? As one very well respected gentleman from Hunstanton said in the Press everyone in the area must do their best to save it, the gentleman said that the Civic Society and everyone else must forget the pier and the green and concentrate on saving the Princess Theatre first.

In Kelly’s Directory for 1925 the building that now houses the Princess Theatre is listed as “Simpsons Hotel and Restaurant (Resident Proprietress, Miss M A Simpson), Accommodation for 100 people, Parties Specially Catered For”. In 1932 it was converted into the Capitol Cinema, the first film to be shown was ‘The Desert Song’. In the 1970s it was converted again into the Kingsly Centre for films and shows. While it was being converted a local man, one Saturday morning, was painting high up, on his own, when he fell right down to the bottom floor, he could not get up and though he shouted for help no-one heard him. He lay there until his workmates came in on the Monday morning, when he got to hospital it was found that he had broken his leg and because of this he walked with a bad limp for the rest of his life.

Then for a short time the Theatre became a Bingo Hall but in 1981 it was taken over by the Borough Council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk and renamed The Princess Theatre. In 1989 the Princess Diana and the two Royal Princes attended a pantomime there. The pantomimes every year have always been highly successful.

The building itself has one of the largest carstone gable ends of any building in the country and the Theatre is at the centre of the Town. If it were to be closed down it would be like taking the heart out of Hunstanton.

Whilst on the subject of cinemas, one of the first cinemas in Hunstanton was the “Mikado” which was situated where the “Waterside” bar is now. It was was burnt down in 1922 along with a fish and chip shop and an oriental bazaar that were on the same site. Mr Bert Wells ran the Mikado for a time but after it burned down he started to take a mobile cinema around the village halls in villages such as Docking, Snettisham, Heacham and Dersingham. At around the same time Mr Ernest Swain went into partnership with Dick Joice, they bought an old pick-up truck and took their mobile cinema around the Burnhams, Grimston, Massingham, Docking and Bilney. After the Second World Ware I can remember both Mr Swain and Bert Wells coming to the Church Hall and the Forresters’ Hall in Dersingham.

People come up to me in the street and they say “Hi Dick, why don’t you write that and that in the newsletter and the press…”, I always say “write it yourself” - anyone can write a letter, but people don’t as you can see by the Newsletter the letters from the readers get less and less each month but are a few people about who, like myself, enjoy writing letters. I write, on average 8 to 10 each week. An elderly lady who lives in the Town told me that her daughter while lives away writes to her a letter each week consisting of four pages of foolscap paper (13ins by 17ins) and has done for the last twenty years. So come on you lot get out your pens and start writing!

On Saturday 24^th October, the Hunstanton Royal British Legion launched their Poppy Appeal by having a small service at the World War II graves in Hunstanton Cemetery. It was a nice service that was attended by about 80 men, women and children, there are 20 of these graves and a small cross and poppy was put on each one of them.

In the November Newsletter I said that it was not a very good year for chestnuts as I could not find many good ones. Therefore I am very grateful to Mr Valentine for bringing me a box full of nuts, I could not roast them as I no longer have an open fire but they are very nice boiled or just eaten raw, or you can stuff your pheasant with them. Well now winter is with us again and thought I don’t think we have had a frost yet, the Waveney Road Estate will soon be lit up with all of these wonderful Christmas lights. So I shall now wish you all a very Happy Christmas and I hope to see you all down the beach for the Christmas Day Swim.

PS I would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to Mrs Gladys Hudson, 102 years old, well done Gladys. Also it was nice to see so many places around the town where you could get your Poppy this year, even from a stall on the Sunday Market.