Frinton-on-Sea

This was my first visit to Frinton since childhood and I headed straight to the beach. I lay my towel by a groyne and propped my Agatha Christie book in the sand. Groups of lads arrived around midday, drinking Red Bull and playing keepy-uppy. Plastic footballs soon homed-in on me [“sorry mate”] and once the barbecues began to fire up, I surrendered and took my pinking limbs into town.

A tiny low church sat on the headland, the smallest in Essex and the first-built of many in the town. At the back stood a small remembrance garden cloaked in shadow and buzzing with bumble bees; a sunken haven of plaques on benches and respite from the May sunshine.

Frinton was the scene of an interesting modernist architectural experiment in the 1930s. It was never fully realized and so the remaining houses stand out amid the bungalows and bricks. Its legacy is a microcosm of the English attitude to housing. Some owners have bought-in to the wider idea, adding art-deco furnishings and striking ornaments. Others seem to have reacted against the whole movement, attaching porches and slate roofs. Why buy a striking white-cube box and then plonk a pitched roof on top? Why not just buy a house with a pitched roof?

Frinton's chip shop & pub are no longer seen as proof of the apocalypse. I stopped at a cafe promoting herbal teas and asked what they had. “Calamine” said the young waitress but luckily it turned out to be Camomile.