I have just realised that some time ago when I wrote about the changing face of Hipkins Beach, I promised to show a picture of the new beach huts when they were completed.

Well, they've been completed and occupied by their new owners who are now enjoying the lovely sunny weather we have been experiencing over the past week or so.

I think that you will agree that the new huts on this prime location have been perfectly presented and will no doubt be a subject for many a keen cameraman in the future. I have already seen framed photographs of the huts for sale in the town.

Well done Robert Hipkin for making this an inspirational site. Now, if only the hundreds of other hut owners would follow suit and change their huts from the drab brown colour that predominates, then Walton would really be on the map.

I was delighted to read in a small magazine which drops through my letter box every so often, of a Walton man who has just raised nearly £1,000 for the British Heart Foundation.

John Hall, a former well-known Walton baker, has recently completed the gruelling London to Brighton bike ride and all this only three months away from his 70th birthday!

I have memories of John when, as a much younger man, he used to thrash me on the judo mat. I think he considered me as a sack of flour which he was clearly used to throwing around.

John is not only a keen athlete but also a toastmaster, naturalist and accomplished poet. Last year he won a local competition with the following poem which I have been given permission to print here. For those of you who know and love the Naze and its flora and fauna I am sure you will appreciate its beauty.

In Praise of the Naze

Redshank sentinels patrol the salt marsh
Early calling early warning
Golden plovers, godwits, knots, take flight
Filling the sky in wheeling, dancing, formation
Bent on escape, but without direction

High above, alert, gimlet eyed
Death selects a victim
Wings fold, body tilts forward
At bullet speed steel talons deliver instant peace

Lifeless, unconcerned now, the peregrine’s meal falls to earth

Close by at lagoon edge,
Wreathed in clerical grey, a heron stands statue still
Below the water a crab scuttles, creating a mud screen
Unaware that it has only moments to exist
The crab dies, that the heron may live.

At the wind whipped surf edge
Sanderlings play tag with the spume
Turnstones turn stones
Ringed Plovers scurry, and gulls squabble.
Each preoccupied with its own survival

Now as evening approaches
Skeins of Brent geese
Head to Horsey Island
Safe haven for the night
Their calls heralding the dark. 

Such is the Naze, as it has been for millennia
Wild and beautiful, savage and serene
Hunters and hunted, victors and victims
A battle ground, a refuge of peace.
Let us not lose it

Since my last posting regarding George Arthur Polley I have received several more very interesting emails from his great grandson, Brian Polley, in the USA.

In one of these Brian mentioned that he had been given an oil painting which was the work of George Arthur. This had hung in his den for many a year without him realising exactly what was depicted. It was only when he had seen the Walton Archive site that he realised that the painting was of the True to the Core Lifeboat on which George Arthur had been coxswain.

Compare the painting with the photograph and I think you will agree that George, who was better known by his second name 'Arthur', was indeed a talented artist especially as he was painting from memory.

George Arthur was a painter and wallpaper hanger in England and America and only took up painting pictures in his later life.

         These are two more of his paintings

This reminded me of a more recent lifeboat coxswain, Jonas Oxley, who was also a keen artist. I wrote about him some while ago

Brian also told me about his great great grandfather, George James Polley, who was the Hon. Secretary for the True to the Core lifeboat. He writes: "My great great grandfather was George James Polley.  He had a house built on the seafront parade which he named "Marine Lodge".  The Walton directory of 1881 lists George Polley of 37 The Parade - Marine Lodge as a boat carpenter.  He acquired a shop in Newgate Street (which backed onto Marine Lodge) and from here he ran a business called 'Old Curiosity Shop' selling chinaware, furniture and antiques."

This rang a loud bell with me and I was able to send to the USA a copy of a picture from the Archive showing the shop in Newgate Street.

It's a small world now thanks to the Internet.

The Internet is a truly wonderful thing. How ever else would I have made contact with the great grandson of one of Walton's first volunteer lifeboat coxswains?

A few days ago I received a message from Brian Polley in America asking if I could help him with names of some folk that appear in a picture on the Old Walton Archive. He went on to explain that his great grandfather was none other than George Arthur Polley the coxswain of the True to the Core Lifeboat and that George had six children all of whom had emigrated to America in 1911.

Unfortunately I could not help him with the names of any of the onlookers in this picture of the True to the Core on the Marine beach. Any suggestions will be passed on to Brian.  Check out a larger image on the Archive web site here.

I contacted Brian and have learned a lot about the Polley family. Brian wrote "George Arthur Polley and F.G. Horton sailed across the Channel in the "Volata" on April 25, 1893 to Calais, France.  He also sailed to Ostend, Belgium in September 1893 on the "White Swan", one of his Father's Yachts with the following crew:  A. Azulay-A photographer from Walton, F. Sparrow, his brother in law, David Polley, his Uncle and Wivvy Polley, his cousin." 

I knew a bit about the White Swan and was able to point it out on one of the archive pictures but I do not know of the Volata. Can you help?

Brian later sent me this picture of George Arthur, aged 78,  photographed with his six children at a family reunion in 1949

The True to the Core was a volunteer Lifeboat which competed with the RNLI lifeboat when there was a casualty at sea.

In Bernard Norman's book, Walton-on-the-Naze in Old Picture Postcards, he names the True to the Core crew in this picture taken around 1900, four of whom are members of the Polley family. No1 is C Polley, No2 is A Polley (Coxswain) which I assume is George Arthur, No3 is D. Polley (Nightwatchman) and No4 is H Polley. Hopefully I will learn more of these other Polleys in due course.

These guys were real heroes going to sea in all weathers with only cork life jackets and sail power. The Illustrated London News reported in December 1905 that the True to the Core had saved over 400 lives in ten years.

All of this can now be expanded upon and shared between Walton-on-the-Naze and the United States of America thanks to the Internet