9/13/2023 0 Comments Tudor fantasy town![]() ![]() Work began promptly and the new country club, known as The Kursaal, with an 18 hole golf course and tennis courts, opened in May 1912, the same year that the first properties were leased in the village. So Thorpe was renamed Thorpeness to distinguish it from the many ‘Thorpes’ in the country and Ogilvie’s plan, to create a fantasy, holiday haven for the upper middle classes, was put into action. Ogilvie was an Edwardian architect, barrister and playwright.Īfter severe flooding in November 1910 reduced Thorpe to a mere puddly field, Ogilvie purportedly looked out to the land at the southernmost point of his estate and declared, “Let’s keep it, and build a holiday village around it.” In 1908, the estate passed into the hands of Alexander’s son, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, born in 1858. The house was extended and renamed to become the magnificent Sizewell Hall as it stands today. Having made a fortune from his work around the world as a railway engineer, within 40 years he had expanded his estate to over 6000 acres, stretching from Dunwich to the north, down the coast to Thorpe, and inland to Leiston and Aldringham. In 1859, Alexander Ogilvie, a civil engineer from Scotland, bought Sizewell House as a holiday home in Suffolk. ![]() So how was it transformed into the wonderland that graces Suffolk’s coast today? The Ogilvie Family The village population continues to swell with fond visitors every summer, many of whom fall in love with its magic and charm. Just a couple of decades later, it would be transformed into a fantastical holiday village, with a beautiful boating lake, complete with Peter Pan islands, a 70ft fairytale cottage on stilts, mock-tudor homes and a luxury country club. In the late 19th century, the Thorpeness we know today was a tiny fishing hamlet on the East Coast, buffeted by the merciless North Sea and home to only a few houses that had not been taken into the waves by erosion.
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