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Thorpeness is a seaside village in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England, which developed in the early 20th century into an exclusive resort. It belongs to the parish of Aldringham cum Thorpe and lies within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB.
The village was a small fishing hamlet originating in the late 19th century, with folklore of it being a route for smugglers into East Anglia. The Suffolk Humane Society opened Thorpeness Lifeboat Station in 1853. It was transferred to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 1855 but closed in 1900.
The landowning Ogilvie family, began to buy into the area in 1859. In 1910, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, a Scottish barrister whose father had made a fortune building railways around the world, increased the family's local estates to cover the entire area from north of Aldeburgh to past Sizewell, up the coast and inland to Aldringham and Leiston.
Most of this land was used for farming, but Ogilvie developed Thorpeness into an elite private fantasy holiday resort, to which he invited his friends' and colleagues' families during the summer months. An exclusive country club with tennis courts, a swimming pool, clubhouse; a golf club designed by the eminent James Braid with its own club house; and many holiday homes were built in Jacobean and Tudor Revival styles. Thorpeness railway station, provided by the Great Eastern Railway to serve what was expected to be an expanding resort, was opened a few days before the outbreak of World War I. It was little used, except by golfers, and closed in 1966.
A notable feature of the village is a set of almshouses built in the 1920s to the design of W. G. Wilson. Wilson's firm. Retrieved 15 November 2020. To hide the eyesore of having a water tower in the village, the tank built in 1923 was clad in wood to make it look like a small house on top of a five-storey tower, with a separate mill next to it, which pumped water to it. It is known as the "House in the Clouds", and after mains water was installed in the village, the old tank was transformed into a huge games room with views over the land from Aldeburgh to Sizewell.Owners' website Retrieved 15 February 2018. A second water tower, reminiscent of a castle tower, is at West Bar, opposite the Country Club, and also had its tank removed to make room for an impressive party hall at the top of the building. West Bar tower is currently being refurbished into luxury holiday accommodation.
For three generations Thorpeness remained mostly in the private ownership of the Ogilvie family, with houses only being sold from the estate to friends as holiday homes. In 1972, Alexander Stuart Ogilvie, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie's grandson, died on the Thorpeness Golf Course. Many of the houses and the golf course and country club had to be sold to pay death duties.
A variety of boats can be rented to enjoy the water, many of them originals dating from the creation of the Meare and named by the local workmen who had dug the lake. In August, the Meare serves as the location for the Thorpeness Regatta, which has been held since 1913.
Like much of Britain's East Coast, Thorpeness has had intermittent problems with coastal erosion, with one house having to be demolished in 2022 due to the encroaching sea. Discussions are still underway for further defences. BBC News. Retrieved 13 December 2019. Ipswich Star. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
A number of power projects, such as cables landing from offshore wind power farms, connector cables such as SeaLink and the construction of Sizewell C are underway in the area. Some of these, specifically the landing of the power cable from ScottishPower's offshore projects and SeaLink are affecting Thorpeness directly. They are all generating significant local opposition, led by Suffolk Energy Action Solutions.
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