South Denes Caravan Park from Nelsons Monument

Photo:South Denes Caravan Park from the top of Nelson's Monument

South Denes Caravan Park from the top of Nelson's Monument

Gt Yarmouth Museum

Photograph of South Denes Caravan Park from the Monument

By John Layton

Here you can see the view from the top of Nelson's Monument of the South Denes Caravan Park.

The area was a thriving industrial estate, with a major electronics firm of the time, Erie Resistor, having its works there. In fact although Erie Resistor has changed owners and names over the years part of the company still exists on the South Denes under the name of C-MAC MicroTechnology (for more information on the history of the company see the comment below).

The Caravan Park has long since gone, but Nelson's Monument still stands, the statue of Britannia ever looking inland towards, it is said, Nelson's birthplace in Burnham Thorpe.

Another, spurious, local legend is that the man who built the Monument should have had the statue looking out to sea and, once he realised his mistake, he threw himself off the top!

The original head of the statue of Britannia can be seen in the Time and Tide Museum.  You can see the mason's initials on its top.

This page was added by John Layton on 05/03/2007.
Comments about this page

A part of Erie does still exist in the form of C-MAC MicroTechnology. There is a considerable history to our firm which manufactures high reliability electronic modules principally for the Aerospace and Automotive markets. The company has taken many names over the years as ownership has changed. From Erie, we became a part of ITT which sold it's controlling share to STC in the early eighties. At the end of that decade, STC was acquired by the Canadian Telecoms giant Nortel and in 1992, the Great Yarmouth and Harlow sites were bought by C-MAC. C-MAC originated in Canada and grew rapidly through the nineties until it was bought by Solectron in 2001. In 2004, C-MAC was divested from Solectron back into private ownership. We are once again headquartered in the UK and employ more than 250 highly skilled and dedicated people at our Great Yarmouth Plant together with sister factories in Ronse, Belgium and Sherbrooke, Canada.

I'm sure that many of the former Erie employees who have lost touch will be heartened to know that the company continues to thrive in South Denes and remains a major employer in the town.

By Chris Andrews, C-MAC MicroTechnology
On 16/08/2007
Add a comment about this page

If you're already a registered user of this site, please login using the form on the left-hand side of this page.