Whilst boating holidays have been attracting holidaymakers to the Norfolk Broads since the Victorian era, hotels, boarding houses, riverside bungalows and apartments have also accommodated their fair share visitors over the years. A recent email to Broadland Memories HQ included a rather intriguing set of plans for a holiday complex and clubhouse from the 1940s which, had they come to fruition, would have changed the village of Horning forever.
At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the holiday hire industry on the Norfolk Broads had come to an abrupt halt as the waterways became pretty much a no-go area for the general public. The hire fleets were largely requisitioned by the admiralty, many rafted together on the open Broads and at entrances to prevent enemy sea planes landing, and several boatyards began to build military vessels for the war effort. As the threat of invasion began to diminish in 1943, restrictions were eased, and leisure boating resumed. Far from picking up where they left off, the boatyards had an enormous amount of work to do to restore the boats following the neglect during the war. Limits on petrol use and food rationing also slowed the return of holidaymakers to pre-war levels. But return they did, the hire fleets increased, and Broadland infrastructure grew to meet the demand.
Norfolk Broads Flotilla 1940 from the IWM Collection © IWM A 1553
During the 1930s, Herbert Woods had been at the forefront of holiday boating on the Broads, with his innovative motor cruiser design and sleek sailing craft, he was a true pioneer of the modern boat hire industry. His fleet of “Light” cruisers had proved to be enormously popular with visitors and business had been booming. When war was declared in 1939, his Broads Haven boatyard at Potter Heigham began building vessels for the Admiralty and Air Ministry. The company was employing around 220 men and 80 women during this period. Between 1939 and 1945, over 200 craft had been built, including two Fairmile D Motor Torpedo Boats, a Fairmile B Motor Launch, General Service Pinnaces, RAF Range Safety Launches, Harbour Launches and dozens of airborne lifeboats. As restrictions on leisure boating eased in 1943, holiday boat hire resumed at the yard, but it seems that Herbert had his eye on a rather ambitious venture.
The Broads Haven Marina at Potter Heigham in the early 1930s
The name Billy Butlin is synonymous with holiday camps in the UK, having opened his first camp at Skegness in 1936. Harry Warner had built his first camp on Hayling Island in Hampshire in 1932 and, closer to home, the Rogerson Hall camp had been opened by the Workers Travel co-operative at Corton, near Lowestoft, in 1938. The common features of all of these camps were a large, central main building of very modern design with tennis courts, gymnasiums, ballrooms, dining halls and rows of holiday chalets designed to house the average family comfortably for a week or two. The introduction of paid holidays for Britain’s workers in 1938 encouraged more families to take an annual vacation and, with everything you needed all in one place, holiday camps were an instant success. An advert placed early in 1936 for Butlin’s new Skegness camp offered a week’s holiday with three meals a day and free entertainment from 35 shillings to £3, and it was apparently fully booked for the season ahead by Easter.
Back on the Norfolk Broads, Herbert Woods had begun to expand his empire towards the end of the war, buying George Applegates yard and fleet next door to the Broads Haven Marina at Potter Heigham and Southgates boatyard on Lower Street at Horning. These were run under his newly formed Broadland Yachting Company name. Herbert also owned the Broads Haven Hotel and stores at Potter Heigham, along with a large market garden nearby which supplied the stores, hotel and holiday hire boats with fresh fruit, vegetables and eggs. According to his daughter, Jennifer Woods, in her book “A Famous Broadland Pioneer”, Herbert also purchased several acres of marshland at Horning, just upstream of Swan Corner. Here he later established Southgates Main Yard with its own associated fleet of hire boats. What Jennifer’s book doesn’t mention is that Herbert appears to have explored the possibility of some much grander plans for that site.
A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by Antony Lyons asking for information on the Broadland Yachting Company. His late father, Eric Lyons, was an architect and designer. Amongst his papers were the plans for a development at Horning which had been commissioned for the Broadland Yachting Company in 1944. The scale of these plans is quite astonishing, and Horning would have been a very different place had the scheme gone ahead. It appears to show what, to all intents and purposes, was a holiday village on the Broads with a very modern main building incorporating a gymnasium and changing rooms, lounges, dining room and kitchens, ballroom, grand terrace and a large hotel wing. An extensive mooring basin would have accommodated a sizeable number of craft, a block of garaging was provided for guests’ vehicles, and the landscaped grounds included tennis courts and a swimming pool. To the north west of the site were a complex of bungalows, all set alongside small dykes so that each had access to the water. Moorings and a Tea Gardens adjoined the River Bure and were described as being for “non members”.
Club House Horning (c) Eric Lyons 1944 by courtesy of the Lyons Family (click on image to view larger version)
Not only did the plans exist, but Antony also sent me some accompanying artist’s impressions of the Club House scheme which he has very kindly given me permission to publish on here. Between them, they illustrate just how much the country was moving towards the future after the war, and it is a holiday complex which could quite easily have been dropped into the middle of 1950s/60s Britain. The post war period saw an increase in the building of holiday camps in the UK leading up to the “Golden Era” of British holidays, and it does appear to nod towards that traditional Butlins blueprint we became accustomed to visiting as families during the second half of the 20th century. But with a Broadland twist.
Artist’s impression of the Yachting Club at Horning (c) Eric Lyons 1944
The first view (above) looks towards the main building, with its canopied entrance, from the direction of the car parking area. On the left is the hotel wing with its balconied windows. The large white building on the right is the gymnasium.
Artist’s impression of the Yachting Club at Horning (c) Eric Lyons 1944
The second view shows the other side of the main building, the large picture window of the lounge areas overlooking the terrace and the River Bure beyond.
Artists impression of the Yachting Club at Horning (c) Eric Lyons 1944
The ballroom and dining areas of the Club House. The design appears to incorporate a huge expanse of glass and ultra-modern interiors.
Artists impression of bungalows at the Yachting Club Horning (c) Eric Lyons 1944
The final drawing shows one of the rows of riverside bungalows. The large picture windows and patio doors, and the wooden cladding, look very much like the holiday chalets which began to spring up around Broadland and elsewhere during the 1950s and 1960s. Remember, we are talking 1944 here!
They certainly were bold plans, and we will probably never know why it was never built. I do wonder whether the marshland would have actually been able to sustain such a large development at that time. The austerity which continued after the war certainly would have affected many businesses, and Jennifer Woods mentions that her father had had to start laying off employees due to a lack of work, even diversifying by taking on the production of wooden car bodies for Alvis and Healy, and repair work on Morris Minor Travellers. Perhaps the funds were just not available for the Club House scheme. His health had not been good either, suffering two heart attacks before a third, sadly, proved fatal in 1954.
Instead, the marshland here became home to Southgates Main Yard, craft for which were built by Herbert at Potter Heigham. The fleet flew under a white burgee with a red star, a variation of the existing Woods blue star burgees. The aerial photograph below from the Historic England collection was taken in 1951 and you can see the new Southgates yard centre right (click on it to zoom in). It was a very different development to that which was proposed in Eric Lyons’ plans.
Although he didn’t live locally, Eric Lyons had struck up a friendship with George Jenkins whilst both were living in Birmingham. Jenkins moved to the Martham area and established the Packet Furniture Company Ltd during the 1940s, producing a range of modern, utility furniture. The “Tecta” range was designed by Eric Lyons for that company. Once again, it really wouldn’t have looked out of place on display at a 1960s ideal home exhibition. Eric Lyons went on to achieve critical recognition for his modernist architectural designs in the post war years, working in partnership with Span developments. During the 1950s and 1960s, Span built over 2,000 new homes in London and the South East, and many of these estates included the communal outdoor garden spaces which were apparently a key feature of Lyons designs. He is quoted as saying “The test of good housing is not whether it can be easily built, but whether it can be lived in easily.” A sentiment which modern housing developers would do well to follow!
The Horning Club House plans and drawings are a fascinating bit of history, and I am very grateful to the Lyons Family for contacting me and for allowing me to share them here. As always, if you can add anything further to the story, or have information about George Jenkins and the Packet Furniture Company at Martham, then please do get in touch.
