Its story has been inextricably linked to the sea since pre-history . The town of Waxham Parva disappeared under the waves together with its church and some of the land that was part of the large estate of Gelham Hall . One of the earliest accounts was written by John of Oxendes , a monk at nearby St Benet 's Abbey , in which he relates the destruction wrought by the great storm of 1287 : the sea , agitated by the violence of the wind , burst through its accustomed limits , occupying towns , fields and other places adjacent to the coast ... it suffocated or drowned men and women sleeping in their beds , with infants in their cradles ... and it tore up houses from their foundations , with all they contained and threw them into the sea with irrevocable damage . Several more incursions occurred over the centuries and by 1604 neighbouring Eccles on Sea had lost 66 houses and more than of land . Three years later Palling 's defences were breached and Waxham was flooded in 1655 and 1741 . The 18th century owner of Waxham , Sea Palling and Horsey , Sir Berney Brograve , by reviving a previous Act of Parliament , unsuccessfully tried to have the sea breaches repaired after many destructive inundations of his estate . Lack of proper maintenance of the dunes led to continuous breaches and it was not until the nineteenth century that a programme of sea defence work was started . The North Sea flood of 1953 took the lives of seven villagers – some of the 100 who perished in Norfolk alone . A memorial plaque is in St Margaret 's Church . Following this tragedy the sea wall was extended in 1986 and in 1995 the Environment Agency undertook a multimillion-pound project erecting four barrier reefs then later in 1998 put up five more to make them more effective
North Sea flood of 1953
North Sea flood of 1953
Sea Palling