A Brief History of Morston © J.J.R.Wingfield, 2003 36 acres of tidal water and 418 acres of foreshore Present Day Morston Morston is one of a group of villages spread out evenly on the coast road west of Sheringham.  Cley, Wiveton and finally Blakeney were better equipped as ports, while Morston seems to have served a mainly farming community.  Any sea workers in Morston would have used small boats or gathered from the foreshore, and working with a perishable commodity, would have gathered and distributed with a minimum of permanent structures.  The result is that it is the farmers who have left a legacy of buildings, and Morston is largely a village of farmyards and smallholdings - the Hall, Manor Farm (or Lower Farm), Church Farm - and their supporting pubs and shops. The exceptions to this are the properties on the west end of the village Though Morston had no access for trading ships, it was well placed for revenue cutters to take the first of the tide, and it was also on the boundary between Blakeney and Wells harbours.  Coastguards were based here from the 1820s to 1920s, for most of the period the Coastguard Station being Coastguard House and neighbouring cottages including China Row.   The Scaldbeck group was built by the Hamond family a century later.       The oldest building in the village, by far,  is All Saints Church - thirteenth century and earlier, followed by Manor House and Sunnyside cottages east of Quay Road (c.l600). The Hall (hotel) is probably rather later, though it has been much altered.  China Row alias Tides Reach) was built around 1820 and Coastguard House in 1836. Most of the rest of the buildings are nineteenth century, probably replacing earlier buildings on the same sites.  A large number of new buildings have been added in the twentieth century including the Scaldbeck group, the Village Hall, Perseverance House, Morston House, the extensions to Church Farm and the Anchor Inn, the National Trust Watch Tower, South Close, the Garden of Eden, and the steel-framed buildings of Hall Farm. More have changed their use. Use of Buildings Until the early part of the twentieth century, buildings generally stayed in the use for which they were  originally built. Only with the great changes in society, its transport, and the ways in which it earns its living have buildings had to be adapted to very different uses. Morston's redundant buildings have almost all been turned into houses, either permanent homes or holiday accommodation. Barns and farm buildings have generally been subdivided, and some of the smaller cottages have either been combined (e.g. China Row) or extended (Church Farm). In other villages there are examples of different changes of use - for example, Cley Forge which has become a delicatessen. A policy for the village should consider pressure for sustainable development - pressure driven by improvements to the location of activities. The pub, for example, lacks parking and is difficult to reach safely from the quay.