THE HISTORY OF OUR VILLAGE, THORPENESS


Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie was the fifth son of eight children born to his mother Margaret and father Alexander – a civil engineer and railway pioneer in 1858. The Sizewell Estate that belonged to the family had been bought in 1859 and Ogilvie never expected to inherit it, but a series of unexpected deaths and tragedies in the family culminating in the death of his 86 year old mother in 1908 meant that the estate passed to him. Educated at Rugby and University College, Oxford Ogilvie’s passion was to be a playwright and writer. However in 1881 he married Helen Davidson and then in 1882 became a solicitor. She later gave birth to two sons and one daughter.

GENERAL

thorpeness village
The village of Thorpeness was created in the early 1900’s. Thorpe was an old fishing hamlet that was inherited along with the family estate by the Scottish playwright and barrister Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie. Ogilvie decided to build a model seaside village from the old fishing hamlet, inspired and based upon the writings of J M Barrie who wrote Peter Pan. Thorpeness was to be a realisation of a poetically nationalistic ideal, and he was adamant that the success of Thorpeness rested solely on his personal vision.

At the centre of his village was the Meare, a man made lake which was made by flooding open fields in 1910. Ogilvie took inspiration from J M Barrie’s’, Peter Pan and the haunts of Wendy and Peter can be found amongst the islands, along with a smugglers cave reminiscent of Ripling and Tatiana’s Bower from Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Nights Dream". Visitors to the area can hire canoes and dinghies to explore the Meare. Ogilvie brought men down from London to help create the Meare but the men sent were unfit and begged to go home. They couldn’t cope with the weather conditions and were miserable and useless, after a week Ogilvie sent them home.

Ogilvie wanted to create a perfect traditional village as an escape from the horrors of a modern industrial life. He employed Frederick Forbes-Glennie and William Gilmour Wilson as the architects instructing them to spread an English Romanticism around Thorpeness. Close attention was given to the surrounding landscape and individual gardens. Plants were chosen that were typically Victorian, fuchsias and pampas grass among them. Heather and Gorse were left to grow naturally on the golf course. The village was built, crucially, to run as a business. The advertising at the time stressed that the village had been constructed to meet every holiday requirement and to suit every holiday purse. The accommodation built ranged from a small Honeymoon hut to large houses on Lakeside Avenue with eight or nine bedrooms. All the properties had bathrooms, electric lights, gas cookers and hot water systems, a first for the time.

For all the luxury however, the Thorpeness lifestyle revolved mostly around outdoor activities. There was the Golf Course, an active cricket club, bowls and tennis at the Country Club. A boatman was employed to watch the beach in the summer and the bathing was extolled, there were even bathing machines for hire! The Thorpeness Regatta was organised to be held in August for local and visiting children and events ranged from a swimming egg and spoon race to the more competitive single dinghy. A Feast of Lanterns brought these activities to a close with a firework display to end everything. This magical traditional still occurs every August and is always well attended.

PUBLIC BUILDINGS


The Country Club:

The first club house was completed in May 1912 and predates all the domestic buildings. It seemed important to Ogilvie that the facilities were in place before any visitors arrived. Originally known as the Kursaal, its role was as a "summer pavilion" constructed on concrete columns and of bitumen stained timber. Designed by Forbes-Glennie, its innovation was in the flexible interior layout. It was possible, by means of sliding panels to convert the lounge and card room into one large space for dances or theatrical performances.

country club
Plans for the redevelopment of the Country Club were spurred into action by the damage caused by six years of Army occupation. In 1914 the name "Kursaal" became undesirable and the name was changed to The Thorpeness Assembly Rooms and Sports Club. The new building however, was little altered in design, merely being an enlarged and more permanent version of the old.

The ability to convert the interior remained, although it was now the stage that predominated, with a secondary use as a Restaurant. It was to be smarter combining the simplicity of a Country Life with the refined luxury of a London West End Club. It was important that the building could function all year round, and that it sat in pleasant grounds rather than be being perched on the edge of a sand dune.

The Workmen’s Club:

country club
The Workmen’s Club is constructed from concrete but disguised by the use of cream render and large oak beams which ensured that it was kept in the local style. It is reminiscent of an old Suffolk barn and it provided a large hall space with a smaller room at the southern end which served as a library, bar and on occasion’s stage, by means of folding panels like those used at the Country Club.

Positioned in the heart of the village it was fully intended for community use, without the exclusion of holiday makers. The hall could be hired for 30 shillings a night until midnight, £2 from 12-2am and use of the piano was charged extra.

The Almshouses:

country club
The Almshouses were designed by W G Wilson at the same time as the working men’s club but they were not completed until two years after the working men’s club was built. Both the Almshouses and the Workmen’s Club were contracted out to Thorpeness Ltd builders. The Almshouses were seen by Ogilvie as the "handsomest and most imposing buildings in Thorpeness".

The design was meant to echo some of the most Jacobean buildings. The gatehouse entrance is evocative of the Tudor Clock Court at Hampton Court as is the three-tiered windows.