Jabba the Hutt at Frinton-on-Sea

Over the years I've acquired a definite penchant for English seaside resorts. Some of these are well-known and justifiably celebrated. Others are rather B-list. Others are even worse: dispiriting places, or at least they were when I came along to take a look at them. 

But they all have something enduringly English about them, some feature - maybe several features - that tell me this place could be in no other country. And often there will be some encounter or some happening while I'm there that fixes the resort in my permanent memory. I may castigate the place in a blog post (like bleak Withernsea, and super-naff Mablethorpe) or praise it (like Hornsea, with its heart-warming brass band concerts). But all of them draw me, with plenty still unvisited (but their moment will come), and plenty more deserving a fresh look - a reappraisal - after many years of absence.

One place recently revisited, not seen since 1985, was Frinton-on-Sea in Essex. 

Frinton was never typical of Essex resorts. It was decidedly not a Southend or a Clacton. It was superior, a place where posh people resided, who could afford nannies for their children. It had a broad greensward backing a neat and tidy seafront. Well, the days of nannies shepherding immaculate children are long gone; but the atmosphere of a quiet and well-off Chiltern suburb placed next to the bracing North Sea has survived. That atmosphere was strong when I went there for a weekend in February 1985, to mark my second wedding anniversary. It had hardly changed in July 2023, when I returned for an afternoon after a 28 year absence. 

After parking Fiona carefully, I walked out onto the south end of that greensward, in the direction of some beach huts. I wasn't expecting anything special. But I was in for a surprise. 

Most beach huts are small, often like these at Milford-on-Sea, Mudeford, Seaford and Southwold:

Southwold is the Mecca of beach hut enthusiasts, the place of all places to go to, if you want to see a fine collection of beach huts, nearly all with witty names. 

Some beach huts are a bit larger. Here are some examples at Southwold again, and at Whitstable:

Some beach huts right down on the sand itself need protection from especially high tides. The usual way is to build them on a raised platform held up by stilts, as with these huts at Wells-next-the-Sea:

But at Frinton last July I saw a fresh variation. Huts built out from a low cliff, the traditional roofed part held aloft over the beach by stout stilts, and behind that (this was new to me) a long gated deck area, big enough to seat an entire family. From down on the beach, you couldn't see the decking. It just looked like a long line of ordinary beach huts, albeit ones supported by stout timbers:

But once up on the pathway behind those huts, you saw the decking. It turned these huts into something remarkable. And clearly there was some competition between huts owners to paint their huts in bright and imaginative ways. I wondered whether the local council had a say in which colours to use, or at least the standard of workmanship, because most of these huts and rear decks were immaculately finished. 

Here are the ones that especially caught my eye. Actually there were several more that I could have shot, but I didn't want to point LXV's lens at any hut if there was a family sunning themselves on the decking, while munching their chicken and salad. That would have been too intrusive.

At intervals there were concrete steps down to the beach.

The light blue hut above was named Jabba, which I thought rather clever. (Jabba the Hutt: get it?) 

I was surprised those pastel-coloured huts above weren't named Barbie and Ken, or Bubblegum. But no.

What would those 1930s nannies have made of it? After this, I went out onto the greensward proper, and rediscovered the Frinton I remembered from 1985, the hotel included. A few more shots to fade out with.