The Lifeboat Inn gives every visiting dog a welcome pack: a personal letter, a bowl and blanket, and a sausage in the morning for breakfast. Dogs get the stone-flagged bar and the rooms, but not the restaurant. The inn has been on Ship Lane since the 16th century, when it was a cottage with two outhouses, and it wasn't licensed to sell beer until 1832 — despite a popular myth that it always was. It became The Lifeboat in 1869, when John and Nellie Sadler took over, two years after the first RNLI lifeboat launched at Hunstanton. The rooms are named after that original crew.
Thornham sits on the A149 about a mile inland from its own harbour, on the north Norfolk coast between Hunstanton and Brancaster. The setting is big skies, salt marshes and a tidal staithe, with farmland rising to the east toward views across the Wash.
There are three pubs, which is a lot for a village this size. The Orange Tree, on the coast road, does Brancaster mussels with smoked bacon, cider and tarragon cream, cottage pie with a cheesy leek mash topping, and Norfolk rhubarb crumble with millionaire's shortbread. Great British Life scored its food a nine and called the fish and chips one of the best. It was formerly the King's Head Hotel, and an old Thornham Ironworks sign for "The Kings Head" still hangs there.
The Chequers is named after the chequer tree, whose berries were once used to flavour beer. It does wood-fired pizzas and tapas made on the premises.
For food you take home, the Thornham Deli is open every day and reckons it does the best coffee on the coast. Drove Orchards, on 40 acres, has its own butchery and deli, pick-your-own apples and plums, and cider pressed on site. There's a fish shop and cycle hire there too.
The Church of All Saints has a tower with a long story. The tower was begun around 1633, then left unfinished when the stonemasons were called to London after the Great Fire of 1666. It was finally completed in 1935. The ship's bell of HMS Thornham, a minesweeper named after the village, hangs inside.
The village was a notorious smugglers' haven in the 1780s, offloading wool, tea, tobacco and brandy from the creeks. On the night of 26 September 1784 a Customs Officer named William Green was shot and murdered here. The men tried for it were acquitted twice.
Later there was an ironworks, founded in 1887 by Edith Ames-Lyde to give villagers work. It made gates and lamps for Sandringham and Balmoral before most of its workforce were lost to the First World War, and it closed in 1920.
The Norfolk Coast Path runs straight through, across Thornham Marshes, and a footpath through the same marshes leads to the beach. Walk up the hill toward Brancaster for about a mile and you get the views across the Wash.
The nearest station is King's Lynn, 21 miles off, with the Lynx Coastliner 36 bus running the coast between there and Wells. The old coal barn still stands on the harbour, three hundred years old, once used by the BBC to film Great Expectations. The harbour draws waders, wildfowl and marsh harriers, and is never crowded.
