Princess Diana’s Norfolk: Brancaster Beach

Photo of Brancaster Beach by henry perks on Unsplash. Photo of Diana, Princess of Wales, on Home page: Paisley Scotland, Wikimedia Commons

“Diana loved to live in an imaginary world where everything was happy. She always wanted everything to be happy. And we were very happy down at Brancaster.” This is how Mary Clarke, nanny to Diana, Princess of Wales, remembers days spent with the young Spencer children on Brancaster Beach, one of North Norfolk’s most beautiful stretches of wind-whipped sand. (You can read part of her account extracted from Diana, Story of A Princess by Phil Craig and Tim Clayton here.).

Although she is most strongly associated with Althorp in Northamptonshire, the stately home of the Spencer family, The Honourable Diana Spencer was actually a Norfolk girl. A summer baby, she was born on July 1 1961 at Park House on the royal Sandringham Estate. This comfortable property with swimming pool and tennis courts was leased by her parents, Viscount ‘Johnny’ Spencer and Frances, daughter of the 4th Baron of Fermoy, from Queen Elizabeth II. The Spencers were intimate enough with the Royal Family - and Sandringham House and Park House were close enough - for Prince Andrew and Prince Edward to pop over on summer afternoons to join Diana, her two older sisters Sarah and Jane and younger brother Charles for a swim in the pool.

From the top of the tallest tower on the Sandringham Estate, you can see The Wash, a broad estuary that flows across boggy fenland into the North Sea. This shift from unchanging countryside to unpredictable ocean created an apt backdrop for the lives of Diana’s maternal family, whose lives often seemed to ricochet between stolid duty and emotional high drama.

Diana’s grandfather Edmund Burke Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy, was the first of the family to rent Park House - he was a friend of King George VI; his wife Ruth was a lady-in-waiting. As Conservative MP for the nearby town of Kings Lynn with a long, solid marriage, Edmund was a conscientious public servant. But after his death, hidden letters led to claims that he had a secret 40-year love affair with an American mother of two he’d met in 1915 while travelling from NYC to San Francisco by train. His daughter, Diana’s mother Frances, had also been born at Park House. She had married Johnny Spencer at 18 at Westminster Abbey in what Reuters news agency called ‘the wedding of the year’. But she struggled with their life of shooting parties and flower shows and, when Diana was just six, was would leave him and begin a relationship with urbane millionaire Peter Shand Kydd, later fighting and losing devastating custody battles for her children.

In the early 1960s, however, Diana’s family was intact. And their favourite place to spend time together was Brancaster Beach. A 13-mile drive along hedgerow-ed lanes from Park House, Brancaster was close enough to pack children, dogs and picnic hamper into the car to chase the sun on a whim - with either a parent or a nanny at the wheel.

It wasn’t the closest beach to Sandringham. Hunstanton - ‘Sunny Hunny’ - with its pony rides and fish ‘n’ chip shops was a little handier. But Brancaster had a special character unaltered by buildings or entertainments. A heartfelt meeting of sea and sky, it is spectacularly broad and almost featureless save for a fringe of blustery dunes. Golden sand is topped with a crunchy sprinkling of shells that’s perfect for building sandcastles - if the swarm of children racing across it calm down enough for quieter activity.

On closer inspection the shells are mostly razors and mussels, evidence of Norfolk’s excellent seafood. Fishing boats bob on the horizon then head back to Brancaster Staithe harbour with their catch of brill and seabass. Yachters are around too, taking advantage of the east coast breezes that helped Horatio Nelson, Norfolk’s legendary naval hero, to learn to sail nearby.

In the 1960s and 70s, a wrecked ship that rose into view at low tide was a feature of Brancaster Beach. The SS Vina, it was a Baltic trading ship that had been used to block Great Yarmouth harbour against enemy invasion during WWII and had eventually drifted away. Perched on a sandbank, it was a curiosity that lured holidaymakers away from the beach, which could be highly dangerous thanks to the East Coast’s fast galloping tides.

But with a little seaside savvy children could run wild. The Spencer family owned a beach hut at Brancaster, and Mary Clarke remembers taking the Spencer children in spring when they had to dig it out of the dunes, where winter’s storms had half buried it. Diana and her siblings would leap from the top of them and try to roll all the way to the sea.

Norfolk life continued for Diana until she was 14, with trips to Brancaster Beach was “always the highlight of summer for us”, according to her brother in an interview with Great British Life. Several years ago, he posted a touching photograph of his mother holding him on the sand on his Instagram account. But when Diana’s father inherited Althorp House in Northamptonshire, the family moved and her life changed.

Photographer Ersoy Emin visited Brancaster Beach in the winter following Diana’s death, and found it in fittingly dismal mood. All children had gone and the beach was near silent except for the sound of waves and wind that whistled as it whipped the sand into dancing patterns. An occasional barking terrier ran through the water and, above, flew pink-footed geese that had arrived to spend winter at nearby Titchwell Nature Reserve.

Without a trace of sun the beach huts looked rather sad, their paint tatty and peeling. The wind had lifted tangled brambles and grasses and deposited piles of sand high against the wood, sometimes almost to the roofs. He photographed one with the doors battered off, exposing the bric-à-brac of family holidays: a garish deck deckchair in an orange floral print, tiny plastic buckets and spades.

Was the Spencer beach hut one of those he photographed? Possibly, although in 2015, Earl Spencer gave an interview in which he said that their hut, the focus of their summer days on Brancaster Beach had ‘long since disappeared into the North Sea’.

There’s no plaque to mark the spot where Diana, Princess of Wales, spent some of her happiest childhood days 50 years ago. But on sunny days, particularly around the anniversary of her death on August 31st, it’s rather moving to watch children race excitedly around the dunes in unconscious tribute to an extraordinary life that began on this elemental coast.

Brancaster Beach is owned by The National Trust, and you can find details of how to visit here.