John Willmott was one of the last to get off the bus that night. At 15, he had just started his first job as an apprentice sheet-metal worker, having left school a few weeks earlier in the December of 1952.

JOHN WILLMOTT: Family died in the tragedy of 1953

It was after 7pm on the evening of January 31, 1953, a bleak and dangerous night by any standards, with a howling wind and tumultuous seas. But as he made his way home from his job at Boulton & Paul, the young John Willmott had no idea that his life was about to take a tragic turn and be changed forever.

As the bus struggled along Beach Road at Sea Palling, the wind battered against the windows and sea sprayed over the dunes.

Mr Willmott recalls: “It was about 7.30pm. We got as far as the fish shop at the top of Beach Road when it seemed that the sea was coming over the dunes.
“Myself and the bus driver, Arthur Turner, got off the bus and ran up Beach Road together as fast as we could.”

Mr Turner ran into his house at the coastguard cottages, and Mr Willmott continued to where he lived, in a 200-year-old thatched cottage with panelled walls with his mother Doris Fox, 42, stepfather Albert Fox, brother Stephen, 13, sister Merle, eight, and his six-month-old stepbrother Edwin.

“They were all at home,” said Mr Willmott, who now lives at The Street, Colton, near Barnham Broom.

He struggled along the street to his cottage but around 100 yards from his door he was hit by a massive wall of water and swept back off his feet.

1. The bus stopped here and could get no further 2. Coastguard cottages where John Wilmott spent the night marooned 3. Other Sea Palling victims died in this area 4. The Wilmotts house once stood here 5. Bus-stop which should have been the final destination

“Somehow I finished up on the wall of the coastguard cottages. It was pitch dark, I could not see what I was doing,” he said. “Mr Turner shouted and I got into the water again and got across to his house. That is how I came to be at his home, how I came to be alive.”

As the water poured into Mr Turner’s cottage they carried items upstairs, putting possessions on a table above the water line and then, as it rose further, they too were forced to seek refuge upstairs.

Mr Willmott, 65, said: “That is where we stayed for most of the night until about 3am when the firemen got us out in a boat.

“The firemen were in the water up to their chests, pushing the boat because they could not row it. I did not get into the boat but the fireman carried me somehow. But it was so cold I had to get him to put me back into the water because it was warmer in the water than out.”

Once on dry land, they were taken to the vicar’s house and stayed there until the morning when they went to the old village hall. “That is where they told me they had all drowned. I remember how they did it, and I didn’t like it,” he recalled.

Mr Willmott has difficulty recollecting exactly what happened after that or where he went, though he did go to stay with his grandparents for some time before he found lodgings.
“I did not know what happened to my family, I was not allowed to see them, though I wish I had done,” he said. His stepfather, Albert Fox, was the only survivor from the house, along with the family’s pet dog, Spot.

Their house was completely washed away, having taken the full brunt of the sea as it burst through the defences.

“Someone did find my stamp album but I was so upset and in a daze that I said they could keep it. I wish I had not done that now.”

The only other family possession was the wreck of his mother’s car, found nearby, buried in the sand. But half a century on, Mr Willmott remains unclear about the full circumstances surrounding the death of his family. However, details from Norfolk police records do hold some information about what happened.

The fire brigade was heavily involved with the police in the rescue operation and recovery of bodies and a unit from Stalham responded to the breach at Sea Palling. Sub-officer William Lancaster, with his crew of Arthur Dixon, Sidney Lowe, William Moss, Jack Vernon and Sidney Vout, arrived in the village at about 10.45pm but made no headway because of the volume of water.

They were unable to row the boat they had commandeered because of the current and had to wade or swim through the freezing water, pushing it along. Later, in a statement to an inquest, Fireman Dixon said: “Behind the Beach Café we saw a light. A man, Albert Fox, was crouched on the bank. Mrs Fox was in the water, a boy lying between them. The boy was dead. I took hold of the woman and, having some difficulty lifting her, found that a girl was tied to her leg with some material. The girl was dead.”

The children were placed on dry land and the parents taken to the Cock Inn, where Mrs Fox later died. It was said that Mr Fox had placed baby Edwin in a pillow case and tied it to his back but the baby had been washed away. The body of Mr Willmott’s baby stepbrother was not discovered for a week.

Mr Willmott, recently retired from the bicycle business he has run for the last 30 years, lost contact with his stepfather in the aftermath of the tragedy. “All I had was what I stood in and even that may have been given to me by the Salvation Army. I had no house, no possessions and no family.”

Mr Willmott went back to work soon after the tragedy, fearful that he may lose the job he had. “After the flood it seemed that most people who were there moved away. I never got a penny from the flood fund.”

Mr Willmott rarely saw people he knew after that, though in recent years he has met up with David Salmon again and Sally Bettis, who he knew from the village and who was on the same bus home that fateful night. He did meet his wife, Phyllis, soon after, when he was 17. They now have two sons and five grandchildren.

They do occasionally go back to Sea Palling and will attend a memorial service on Sunday, February 2 where a commemorative plaque will be unveiled.

It will bear the inscription: In memory of the residents of Sea Palling who lost their lives in the 1953 East Coast Floods. Doris May Fox aged 42 and her baby Edwin Fox. Stephen Willmott aged 13, Merle Willmott aged 8 (Children of Doris Fox by an earlier marriage). William Hamblin aged 87 and his wife Isabella aged 80. Sarah Edna Ellen Clarke aged 62.

He has few pictures of his family from 1953, most were washed away in the torrent. “I do have one of Merle when she was eight. She would have been 58 now but obviously I still think of her as she was then.” He has another brother, Aubrey, who lived in Wales at the time but now lives in Bacton.

A sister, Jean, lives in Canada, where she also lived at the time of the tragedy. “What happened in 1953 did have a big effect on me,” said Mr Willmott. “I have spent all my life worrying about what might happen. I do not want my family ever to go through what I went through. I think about what happened every day – I would like to know more about what happened to them.”