Many people with the means, would consider the chance to purchase a £125,000 three-bedroom clifftop property in the heart of Norfolk, yards from a lively village resort and with direct access to one of the most beautiful sandy beaches in Britain, a no brainer.
However, those people have never been to Hemsby – the quintessential seaside holiday village which claims to have provided ‘1200 years of fun’ – now sinking into the sea at a rate of knots.
The village, home to about 3,000 people, has suffered from severe coastal erosion in recent years with many properties abandoned as the cliffs slip away.
A report by climate group One Home previously estimated that coastal homes in England worth a total of £584million could be lost to cliff collapses by 2100.
The residents of Fakes Road know that all too well as they have seen it happen – waving goodbye to their neighbours one by one- as the sea takes their homes, mortgages and livelihoods with remorseless efficiency.
This bleak situation is tragic for those involved and routinely captivates the public imagination as the problem is now well known and depressingly fast.
A terrifying map released by Canadian researchers showed that large parts of UK coastal towns and villages, including Hemsby and nearby Great Yarmouth, will be permanently underwater should a projected 1.6 feet of sea level rise.
‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside’, sang nobody in Hemsby – the Norfolk village sinking into the sea
New resident Martin Wiggins is coming to terms with the scale of his £125,000 investment – having bought just two months ago
On either side of his front-door hang two pieces of plaster wood which he jokes he ‘touches for good luck’ every time he leaves the house
However his retirement home is now just yards away from the cliff edge
Indeed and we are all now accustomed to bleak images of half sunken houses, overflowing with memories and cherished items spilling out into the abyss and enormous cranes demolishing precariously balanced beach huts.
Why then, knowing what we do about the depressing certainty of complete annihilation for large sections of the British coast, would someone buy a property, no less a retirement one, on the front lines of the crisis?
Meet Martin Wiggins, 70, a charming retiree who sells kindling from the front of his delightful bungalow on Fakes Road.
Martin and his partner bought their ‘forever’ home just two months ago for the price of £125,000. They do not have a mortgage, as it is impossible for them to be offered on the road.
‘We wanted somewhere to escape it all’, Martin tells the Mail from the front of his light-blue house, ‘we had been in France for nine years and fancied a change.’
On either side of his front-door hang two pieces of plaster wood which he jokes he ‘touches for good luck’ every time he leaves the house.
It’s a refreshingly cheerful take on a grim predicament but it is rooted in a very real and very likely fear.
Just behind Martin’s house, hidden down a public footpath now closed off to the public, sits the endgame of the couple’s six-figure investment: a heavily vandalised, rotting shack that was once somebody’s home.
The sign now reads as a cruel joke to the residents of Hemsby – who live life on the very edge
Pictured: Fakes Roads residents laying down makeshift sea defences
The North Norfolk coastline is littered with dead houses which could well be the fate of Martin’s
This abandoned property directly behind his has become a hive of anti-social behaviour
Until it is removed by the council, it will be used as a parttime den for youths, urban explorers and near-do-wells – who take joy out of daubing swastikas and graphic genital cartoons on the walls and smashing in the windows.
Eventually, the land it squats on too will be swallowed by the waves, and all memory of the house on the cliff will fade.
But did Martin know this when he bought his place by the sea?
He continued: ‘We don’t know. We knew a bit about the erosion before we bought but we were thinking “ok, they might sort it out whatever”.
‘The people we bought it from sort of said it’s a lottery.’
Value of property along the two most affected roads – Fakes and The Marrams (a beach side road lower down the cliff which is now all but completely eroded) – is seen as entirely subjective these days.
Many residents who were ever in a position to sell and recoup some of their losses have long since done so, and other less fortunate residents are so desperate to get out that stunning 1920s built houses have been known to be go for just £9000.
And Martin isn’t the only new resident.
Another property along Fakes Road sold for £238,000 in August, and according to property aggregator TheMoveMarket – that value has already dropped by £6,000.
Other residents have reported losing as much as £60,000 off the values of their home.
Two other relatively fresh faces in the village are Simon and Geneve Measures, a charming couple who bought their 1920s hut in 2021 for £190,000.
This three-bedroom property on Fakes Road sold for £238,000 in August, and according to property aggregator TheMoveMarket – that value has already dropped by £6000
Genevieve and Simon Measures have watched their neighbours forced out one by one
They bought their 1920s hut in 2021 for £190,000 and have no real contingency plan
Nobody living in Hemsby believes the coast line can be saved but they are demanding support
They knew about the problem, of course, but assumed that their property which sits further back from Carole’s may weather the ongoing storm. The reality has proved much different.
Website designer Simon is chairman of Save Hemsby Coastline and splits his time between the campaign and his independent business and like many others has no contingency plan should the sea take his home.
‘When we did our research we were told it was about a meter a year, which is what it has been but we have two dogs and a cat’, he laughs, ‘so we can’t rent can we?
‘We do have a caravan which we can live in for a bit. But that’s the only option. We might have another couple of years, but we don’t speak in years here. We measure in storms.
‘Just this week we have lost a meter and a half in our front garden. Our neighbour’s is edging ever closer, they will put pressure on her to demolish soon.
‘When we heard that news about coast researchers complaining of stress, we thought “Really! Do you want to swap?!”‘
However, Simon doesn’t believe it is ‘morally wrong’ for people to buy and sell property along the cursed coastline and earlier this year even offered guidance to a house-hunter trying to buy his former neighbour’s home for £9,000.
‘He only intended to use it in the summer’, he explains, ‘so I said well if you think about it from the £900 or so you’d spent on renting another beach hut for a month – if you get over ten months use out of it, you have saved a bit of money.’
‘You should be allowed to sell your house but there should be a caveat that you have to come and see it for yourself before you buy.’
For more information on Save Hemsby Coastline and to offer support, click here.
