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Sample Our Soup
The RNLI SOS day is now an annual fixture. The Cromer Ladies Lifeboat Guild and the Henry Blogg Museum teams combined efforts for a Saturday morning of soup and an afternoon of scones to raise funds. A wide variety of tasty soups helped on a cold day and a wonderful selection of cakes accompanied the scones after the midday break. And don't panic - signalling SOS will still bring you help if you're in trouble at sea.
Welcome to Cromer
This site is presented by Cromer Chamber of Trade, an association of nearly one hundred shops and businesses in the town. We'd love you to come and visit us, buy our products and make use of our services. Click on the "Businesses" button on the left to see what we can offer.
Do use the map facilities to find out just where the Chamber of Trade members are. Many of the town centre businesses belong to the Chamber but there are lots of other around the town, such us up on the Middlebrook Trading Estate.
With its pier and its two museums, wide open beaches, spectacular cliffs, its famous pier show, its cinema with three screens, there's lots to enjoy in Cromer. And we haven't mentioned the many glorious walks in the neighbourhood, the town's Folk Festival and Carnival, Lifeboat Day and Firework displays, the places to visit in north Norfolk ……… well, explore the site to see just what is on.
The streets of Cromer today are little removed from how they looked in the Victorian era. Most of the great landmarks, many of which were created by the well-to-do Victorian "summer timers", still stand as familiar to the holiday makers of today as they were to their counterparts a hundred years ago.
Cromer does however have a much more ancient history than that, the magnificent church is a medieval legacy, a relic from the days when Cromer was still known as Shipden - a modest settlement of fishermen and merchants.
A small, almost impoverished town, Cromer was "discovered" in the 18th Century by well to do travellers as a watering place. Cromer began to grow, slowly at first due to its remoteness, but upon the arrival of the railway in 1877, linking Cromer with London and later the Midlands, development gathered pace. The Victorian travel writer Clement Scott coined the name "Poppyland" for the area, wrote about it in the national papers, and the people came, both to visit and to live. Land was released from Cromer Hall and estate developers began building hotels and residential areas.
By the 1890s Cromer was fashionable and booming. Many fine residences were built and the Urban District Council saw that the infrastructure - drainage, roads, schools, electricity and so on - was the best. In 1900 a new pier were erected and the promenade, first built sixty-five years before, was lengthened and enhanced. The suburban development of the 20th century, particularly of the post-war period has seen the town expand in every direction.
The Town's reputation for crab fishing is undiminished. You can still watch the crab boats arrive every morning with their catch. There are several small fish shops in town where you can buy one of the day's catch and virtually every eating place will have a crab dish on the menu.
For over two hundred years the town's lifeboats have helped those in trouble off the open north-east Norfolk coast. Hauling up the sails and pulling on the oars is not the way it's done now - a brand new high speed lifeboat sits in its pier head boathouse, ready for immediate action. On the east promenade the RNLI Henry Blogg Museum tells the story of its most famous lifeboatman and his colleagues over those two hundred years
As well as one of Norfolk's most attractive seaside resorts, Cromer is also an important residential, administrative and service centre for the growing population of North Norfolk - yet it still retains the air of Victorian and Edwardian charm at its heart. A recent regeneration programme has enhanced this charm whilst introducing new facilities in the town and on the seafront. We hope you'll come and explore all this for yourself!
