The Stiffkey Red Lion keeps four log fires going and a menu that changes daily depending on what comes up the coast. The lobsters and crabs arrive from Wells-next-the-Sea, four miles west, caught and delivered the same day. In season there are Wells mussels, brown shrimps, wild samphire from the marshes, and the local cockles known as Stewkey Blues. One reviewer settled the matter of the mussels with "Still the best mussels you can eat."
It's the only pub in the village, a beamed building from around 1670 with a stone floor and a nineteenth-century frontage facing the coast road. The same family has owned and run it since 1989. The menu isn't only seafood — there's Sicilian beef brisket pappardelle, a Norfolk pork chop, venison pie, a squash curry. Three cask ales, four in summer, usually Woodforde's Wherry and Nelson's Revenge. Dogs are welcome. The patio faces south, which matters here, because in fine weather you can sit with the sunset over the marsh.
The village itself is flint cottages along narrow lanes, chalk slopes rising behind, saltmarsh and tidal creeks spread out in front. All of it sits inside the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The little River Stiffkey runs through, and gives the place its name.
The Norfolk Coast Path passes straight through, skirting the saltmarshes — Blakeney is roughly four miles east via Morston, Wells about the same to the west. The National Trust marsh walk from Blakeney finishes at the Stiffkey car park, past twisting muddy creeks and breeding waders. Stiffkey Fen, a reedbed and freshwater lagoon beside the path, is a well-known spot for birdwatching. The marshes are free to walk, flooded daily by the tide.
There's no railway here. The A149 coast road runs through, and the Sanders Coasthopper bus links the village to Wells, Blakeney, Sheringham and Cromer. Wells is the nearest town for shops.
The cockles are worth knowing about. Women called cocklers once raked the Stewkey Blues from the mudflats by hand, washed them in seawater and steamed them, and ate them with pepper and vinegar. The blue tint comes from the glauconitic clay the locals call Norfolk Stew. The cold winter of 1989 killed off much of the cockle bed and the trade never fully recovered. The cockles are now on the Slow Food Ark of Taste, which is a formal way of saying there aren't many left.
The name itself is a point of contention. Locally the older form is "Stiff-key"; the widespread "Stew-key" came from the Domesday spelling and those clays. People here have opinions.
The churchyard at St John the Baptist holds Harold Davidson, rector from 1906 to 1932, who ministered to women in Soho during the week, was defrocked for it, and later exhibited himself in a barrel on Blackpool seafront to fund his appeal. He died in 1937 at Skegness, mauled by a lion named Freddie after stepping on a lioness's tail. He is buried a short walk from the pub.
