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The Churchill Connection

Lady Randolph Churchill was a frequent visitor to north Norfolk and in the summer of 1885 brought her young sons Winston (11 years old at the time) and Jack to spend the months of August and September at Cromer.

Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston's father died in 1895 age 46 and Lady Churchill re-married in 1890. At 26, her new husband George Cornwallis-West, was 20 years her younger and the same age as her son Winston.

Lady Churchill became a frequent visitor to Overstrand and for many years up to the commencement of the Great War, stayed with either Sir Edgar and Lady Speyer at Sea Marge or with Sir George and Lady Lewis at the Danish Pavilion.

In the summer of 1914 Clementine Churchill with her two children, Diana and Randolph plus a nanny, spent the months of July and August at Pear Tree Cottage in the Londs at Overstrand and her sister-in-law, Goonie Churchill with her two sons stayed at Beehive Cottage a short distance away. Despite the menacing news from abroad, Winston managed to spend several Sundays with his family at Pear Tree Cottage during the summer of 1914, the last on Sunday 26th July, where he played on the beach with his children.

That Sunday Churchill spoke on the ship's telephone to Prince Louis of Battenburg and decided that events demanded his presence, he left Overstrand for the last time and returned to London on the admiralty yacht HMS Enchantress. As Pear Tree Cottage had no telephone at the time, kind neighbours, Sir Edgar Speyer and his wife offered Clementine the use of the telephone at their home 'Sea Marge'. From there at pre-set times she was able to talk to her husband and keep track of what was happening.

A few days later at eleven o'clock on the night of 4th August, Great Britain was at war with Germany. Clementine was ordered back to London by her husband and on October 7th gave birth to her third child Sarah.

Despite reports and writings to the contrary, the Sir Winston Churchill Society together with the writings of Lady Soames and other sources, make it perfectly clear that there is no evidence to support claims that Sir Winston or Lady Clementine returned to Overstrand after the summer of 1914.

It would have been impossible for Churchill to have been in Overstrand at the commencement of the Second World War, contrary to what has been written elsewhere. In August 1939 he was in France touring the Maginot Line, afterwards he joined Clementine for a painting holiday at Marlborough and Dreux in France. Churchill returned to England on the 23rd August 1939. On the 3rd September, the day British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the world that Great Britain was once more at war with Germany, he was appointed as First Lord of the Admiralty.

8 months later on 10th May 1940, Chamberlain resigned and King George VI asked Churchill to form a Government and the rest, as the saying goes, "is history".