NHER 51883 (Building record) - 33 Sea Lane, Old Hunstanton

10 October 2006. Building Survey.
The house is part of a group of houses built around a courtyard. Built of a variety of materials, including two walls of decorative rubble typical of North West Norfolk. The buildings are labelled as 'Marine Buildings' on the 1889 Ordanace Survey map, and were part of a small development which was undertaken by the Le Strange family, who owned the estate. No 33 appears to be the latest addition to the development, clearly shown on the house's south west corner which is built against No 31.
The materials with which the house is built are of grear interest. The courtyard side is of plain brickwork laid out in flemish bond. The gable- end on to the street contains red chalk, clunch, flint pebbles, ferruginous conglomerate, glacial erratics, randomly laid brick headers, regular bricks to gable edges and dressings, very small amounts of carstone and four bottle ends in a row. Beneath the bottle ends there is the brick housing for a former inscribed stone. One of the buildings in the group has a datestone, which has clearly been reset and may well have originally come from No.33.A tie iron made of scrap metal and forming the letter 'N' is located on the right hand side of the gable end. The first floor window has a skewback arch creating a decorative pattern. At ground floor level there are some disturbances suggesting alterations. Redundant brick dressing around the window suggests that the window was larger, and in filled former keyed quions suggests that the doorway is an insertion.
The north west façade is also rubble, but not as varied, and contains a lot of clunch. There is a horizontal brick string course about 6ft from the ground. Adjacent to the later chimney are a pair of brick pillasters which may have formed a wide opening. They do not rise higher than the stringcourse. The stringcourse corresponds to a change in quoining at its southern end. The complex meeting of four different types of masonary on the rear façade suggests that the lower coursesoff No.33 belong to a different earlier structure. It is difficult to know what type of structure this may have been, but the wide opening suggests a gateway abd therefore it was probably a freestanding wall.
The brick façade on the entrance side of the building had four doorways along its length, three of which are now blocked or turned into windows. As the interior has been extensively renovated it is difficult to understand the need for so many doorways.
See (S1) for further information.
H. White (NLA), 7 November 2008.

June 2008.
Many of the abovementioned architectural features confirmed by (S2).
H. White (NLA), 5 December 2008.