Although Frinton is now known as a seaside resort, its position on a coast with few natural harbours seems to have had little effect on the early development of the parish, whose economy was always primarily agricultural.[1] From the early Middle Ages onwards its manorial lords and inhabitants, like those of neighbouring parishes, presumably salvaged what they could from the cargoes of wrecked ships. There may also have been some fishing from the shore.[2] Smuggling was rife in the 18th century and the early 19th. In 1721 a customs officer literally stumbled on 19 casks of brandy buried in the parish,[3] and in 1908 it was believed that Frinton church had been used to store smuggled goods.[4] During the Napoleonic Wars the Essex coast was under threat of invasion, and a battery was erected at Frinton in 1797. A martello tower was built beside the battery, which was probably itself rebuilt, between 1808 and 1812. The tower was never garrisoned because of fears for the soldiers' health in an area so near the malarial Essex marshes.[5]

BOUNDARIES AND LANDSCAPE

Frinton, with an area of only 469 a. or 190 ha., was one of the smallest parishes in Essex, both in area and in population. The main part of the parish was triangular, the sea shore forming its long side. Part of the western boundary followed a stream, and part of the northern boundary a track or lane. Until the 1880s there were three detached portions of Frinton: one (0.158 a.) on the main road in Kirby Cross hamlet in Kirby-le-Soken parish, and two (45.319 a. and 5.584 a.) between Great Holland, Kirby, Thorpe-le-Soken, and Little Clacton. The first was incorporated into Kirby in 1883 and the second and third into Great Holland in 1888.[6] Frinton was probably always a small estate, but its present low acreage may be partly due to coastal erosion; in 1726, for instance, the erection of a sea wall in the south-west corner of the parish resulted in the loss of 2 a. of land.[7] In 1907 it was claimed that 184½ a. had been lost since 1777,[8] but the figure for 1777 seems to have been based on Chapman and André's map of that year, which cannot compare in scale or accuracy with the late 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps. In the early 18th century the parish was said to contain only 400 a., a total presumably based on rate books. The figure is clearly inaccurate, but nevertheless suggests that the early 18th-century parish was not a great deal larger than the early 20th-century one. The reduction in size between the surveying of the tithe map in 1837 and of the Ordnance Survey map in 1874 was c. 12 a.[9] It may also be that some land which had originally belonged to Frinton manor became part of neighbouring parishes in the early Middle Ages, as the powerful ecclesiastical lords of the Clactons and the Sokens acquired its tithe for their churches.

The parish, including the cliffs on the coast, is composed of London clay with small pockets of sand and gravel, a combination which has increased the speed of erosion as water trickling through the sand and gravel has weakened the clay cliffs.[10] The old parish church and the neighbouring Frinton Hall farmhouse stood on a larger patch of sand and gravel, and there is another, smaller, patch of sand and gravel to the west of Frinton Wick farmhouse, now the Library. A narrow band of alluvium along the stream on the western parish boundary provided the only meadow. Much of the largest detached portion of the parish was composed of sand and gravel.[11] The land slopes from about sea level at the stream at the southern tip of the parish to over 20 m. on its northern edge, reaching a high point of 23 m. near the station.[12]

COMMUNICATIONS

No major roads passed through, or near, Frinton, which until the 20th century was reached by a lane from Kirby-le-Soken.[13] The Tendring Railway company considered making a halt at Frinton when the line to Walton was completed in 1864, and the idea had the support of Richard Stone of Frinton Hall.[14] Stone travelled to Colchester by train in 1867, possibly from an unofficial Frinton halt; there was no official stop at Frinton until the station was opened in 1888.[15]

Until the early 18th century there was apparently a haven for small boats somewhere on the coast, possibly in the south-west corner of the parish below the field later called Boat Field.[16] The five Frinton men accused of a murder in West Mersea in 1285 had presumably travelled there by boat.[17] A sea journey ended in tragedy in 1578 when John Thurston of Frinton Hall, his brother Steven, and two other Frinton men, all described as yeomen, took John Thurston's wherry to go to Little Holland to collect wood. On the return journey they were all drowned as they approached the shore.[18] The lord of the manor kept a boat in the 1690s.[19]

SETTLEMENT, POPULATION AND TOPOGRAPHY

There is very little evidence of early settlement in Frinton. Two Roman coins have been found, one of them, a denarius of Augustus, on the beach. A possibly Romano-British ditch was followed by a later hedgerow near the modern Fourth Avenue.[20] The first element of the place-name may derive from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'protected, safe, secure', either in the sense of 'fenced in', 'enclosure', or possibly of 'an offering sanctuary'. In the absence of archaeological evidence it is impossible to decide between those meanings, or to eliminate the possibility that 'Frin' is a short form of a personal name.[21] The second element, 'tun', probably means farm.[22]

There was probably never a village in Frinton; like many other Essex parishes, it was an area of scattered settlement. The old church, which contains 14th-century or earlier fabric, stands near the coast, where by the 17th century it acted as a landmark for sailors.[23] A short distance north of the church was the farmhouse of Frinton Wick, and a little further north of that, the parsonage house. The 17th-century Frinton Hall lay on the coast north-east of the church; it fell into the sea early in the 18th century, and was replaced by a house immediately north of the church which was itself demolished c. 1930.[24] The only other substantial building in the parish was the early 19th-century martello tower, which in 1816 housed army pensioners. The tower was demolished c. 1819, but the adjoining battery house survived until 1881 or later.[25] It was normally used as a labourer's cottage, although in 1861 it was occupied by a coastguard.[26]

Until the 20th century the population of Frinton was very small, probably never much higher than 50. The recorded population fell from 9 villeins, 3 bordars and 6 servi in 1066 to 5 villeins and 4 servi in 1086,[27] suggesting the number of inhabitants may have more than halved from c. 70 in 1066 to c. 30 in 1086. Thirty four people paid poll tax in 1377, suggesting a population of c. 45–50, the lowest parish total in Tendring hundred. Although the population was presumably higher c. 1300, before the famine of 1313–15 and the plague of 1348–9, Frinton was the poorest parish in the hundred in 1319 and 1327, and may already have had the lowest population.[28]

There had been further decline by 1650 when there were said to be no more than four families in the parish.[29] Only five households, two occupying the same house, were recorded in 1671.[30] For most of the 18th century only one or two families brought children for baptism at any one time,[31] suggesting there had been little or no population growth. In 1790 there were four houses and a few cottages, some of them in the detached areas of the parish.[32] In 1801 the population was 31, and although it rose to 45 in 1821, it fell to only 29 in 1861. The fluctuations mainly reflected changes in the size of the households at the only two middle-class houses, Frinton Hall and Frinton Wick. Thereafter the population rose slightly, to 54 in 1871 and 87 in 1891, as a few new houses were built. If the illness which, according to Richard Stone of Frinton Hall, killed a great many old people in August 1869 affected Frinton, it did not lead to a reduction in overall population. There may have been few old people in the parish; only three seem to have been included in a list of those receiving a dole of bread and meat in 1868.[33] Only in the 1890s, after the opening of the railway station, did many people start to move into the parish, raising the population in the new resort to 644 by 1901.[34] That year, however, a writer could still recommend the 'rural simplicity and peace' of Frinton.[35]