Thorpeness
| Thorpeness | |
|---|---|
 Thorpeness Windmill |
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 Thorpeness
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| Thorpeness shown within Suffolk | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Leiston |
| Postcode district | IP16 |
| EU Parliament | East of England |
Thorpeness is a village in the county of Suffolk, England. It is part of the parish of Aldringham cum Thorpe and is within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB.
The village was originally a small fishing hamlet in the late 19th century, with folklore stories of it being a route for smugglers into East Anglia. However in 1910, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, a Scottish barrister who had made his money designing railways around the world, bought the entire area from north of Aldeburgh to past Sizewell, up the coast and inland to Aldringham and Leiston.
Most of this land was used for farming but Ogilvie developed Thorpeness into a private fantasy holiday village, to which he invited his friends' and colleagues' families during the summer months. A country club with tennis courts, a swimming pool, a golf course and clubhouse, and many holiday homes, were built in Jacobean and Tudor Revival styles. Thorpeness railway station, provided by the Great Eastern Railway to serve what was expected to be an expanding resort, was opened a few days before the outbreak of World War I. It was little used, except by golfers, and closed in 1966.
A notable feature of the village is a set of almshouses built in the 1920s to the design of W.G. Wilson. To hide the eyesore of having a water tower in the village, the tank was clad in wood to make it look like a small house on top of a 5-storey tower, with a separate water-pumping windmill next to it. It is known as the "House in the Clouds", and after mains water was installed in the village the old tank was transformed into a huge games room with views over the land from Aldeburgh to Sizewell.
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Wikipedia