Naze Mariner / Eastcliffe Hotel art print (Walton Landmarks)

This art print is from our Walton Landmarks range.

High quality pigment inks, printed on 230 gsm matte archival poster paper.
Supplied ready to frame. 

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The Right Honourable Alfred Barnes  (Labour Minister of Transport  from 1945 to 1951 and MP for East Ham South until he stood down in 1955) and his family had been summertime residents Of Walton for many years with their family home being in Saffron Walden but just after World War I, they came for a family holiday to Walton and liked it so much they decided to buy land and make their own ‘permanent camp’.  They were actually there when World War II broke out and his daughters remained there with Leila and Maureen attending collecting Clacton County High School and Brenda going to Walton school during the winter of 1939 to 1940. 

In 1947 Alfred Barnes purchased the bombed out Eastcliff Hotel and 30 acres of land. The land would go on to become the Eastcliff caravan park and the Eastcliff Hotel provided holiday flatlets (with Alfred and his family living there themselves while work completed on the caravan site and his home). The top floors of the hotel had beautiful sea views and  the downstairs became the clubhouse for both the Coronation and Eastcliffe Caravan parks.

Alfred Barnes’ original family home. Brenalwood in Walton has greatly expanded to become the Brenalwood Care Home. To the left of the care home you can still see where the original entrance to the Eastcliffe caravan site was, opposite Beatrice road.  You can still explore a small part of the land known as the Barnes Spinney nature reserve once a year, during their annual opening day which sells plants bric-a-brac and home-made cakes to raise funds for the Essex wildlife trust.

Alfred was well known for carrying out his daily site inspections walking with his cane, which he used due to losing a leg in a fairground accident at the age of 8 - and his brother was Billy Barnes a professional football player. 

In 1951 Alfred bought five World War II concrete petrol barges to the Walton backwaters.

Upon Alfred‘s death in 1974 his daughter and son-in-law - the Symes Family took over the running of the campsite and hotel for many years until they eventually retired and decided to sell the site to the Coronation campsite which by then had become the Naze Marine.  

The two neighbouring caravan sites now form the much larger Naze Marine that we know now.

The hotel still served as the Naze Marine’s clubhouse. By now it was renamed the ‘Naze Mariner’. It’s basement was home to the  Eastcliffe and Cellar Bar nightclubs. , the ground floor extension to the side of the hotel was an amusement arcade - boasting one-armed bandits and other classic arcade machines, tuppenny nudgers and the gift machines used to dispense the gift in little cardboard box - This was prior to the chicken eggs and ''oranges and lemons' machines that came later. 

There was a part of the bar that had a lower down counter, especially for serving children -  a sort of tuck shop!  The Naze Mariner stayed open until work was completed on the newly merged caravan site to create an on-site clubhouse, amusements, restaurant and other facilities. And the Eastcliffe Hotel was converted into the flats that you see on that corner today. 

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