For king and county

A land of open skies, high-piping oystercatchers and ancient churches, Norfolk has long been associated with Britain’s monarchs. Nick Trend discovers what gives it crown appeal

- Nick Trend

THE long, slow curve of Norfolk’s coastline fades almost imperceptibly into the North Sea. It’s a mysterious, intoxicating land scape where low chalk downs, peppered with woods, fields and flint villages, merge into vast stretches of beach and marsh.

The sea, luminous under huge skies in the distant haze, works quietly on the shore. The soundscape is not the crashing breakers and hectic gulls of the ozone coast of the West Country, but the bubbling cry of the curlew, high-piping oystercatchers and, if you are lucky, perhaps the low, distant boom of a bittern.

Of course, there are storms, swells and tidal surges and, when an easterly wind blows up, it can be as bracing as Skegness. Yet this only adds to the sense of remoteness, of being on the edge of things, of escape from the everyday. Not surprising, then, that Norfolk has held such an enduring appeal for the Royal Family. Members have been coming here to relax and unwind since 1862, when Queen Victoria bought Sandringham—a 7,700-acre estate, graced at the time by a rather more modest house, tucked between the sea and Sir Robert Walpole’s Houghton Hall—as a 21st-birthday present for the then Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. The Prince moved in with his new wife, Princess Alexandra, and liked it so much that he soon decided he needed more space to accommodate a growing family and indulge his taste for lavish entertainment—despite the fact that the original hall had 29 bedrooms.