BLAKENEY POINT IN 1913. 
703 
Botanically, the Point was well known to naturalists both in 
Norfolk and beyond. Babington in his Journals records a visit 
in 1837, and many specimens of plants from the locality have 
found their way to the Herbaria of the British Museum and 
Kew. 
In recent years the botanists of University College, London, 
have frequently visited the area, and in 1910, shortly before his 
death, the sixth Lord Calthorpe gave them facilities for an 
extended survey of the vegetation. During the summer of 
1911 the successors to the estates decided to sell the Blakeney 
property (including Blakeney Point), and the purchaser was 
found willing to dispose of the Point as a separate lot. This 
same summer saw the visit to Blakeney Point of the Inter- 
national Phytogeographical Excursion on its pilgrimage through 
the British Isles. Its members formed the strong opinion that 
no area could be more suitable for a Nature Reserve than 
Blakeney Point, and that it was most desirable that it should be 
secured. Thanks to the good offices of Mr. G. Claridge Druce, 
the well-known expert on the British Flora, influential interest 
was aroused, including that of the Fishmongers’ Company, and 
by the summer of 1912, Blakeney Point (from the Cley bathing 
huts to its western extremity) had been secured and transferred 
to the National Trust. Nor was this all : at Whitsuntide in the 
same year, certain residues of the Calthorpe property were 
offered for sale, and a generous donor availed himself of the 
opportunity to purchase and add to the gift the strip of saltings 
which extends from Blakeney Quay to a point about half-a-mile 
from Cley. The property thus acquired by the National Trust 
forms a natural area of shingle beaches, sand dunes and salt 
marshes of the greatest interest for its fauna and flora, as well 
as for its unique physical peculiarities. 
The Committee . — Towards the close of 1912 the National 
Trust appointed the following persons to act as the Committee 
of Management: — Sir Edward Busk, the Rev. Everitt J. Bishop, 
Mr. A. W. Cozens- Hardy, Mr. Walter Derham, Mr. G. Claridge 
Druce, Mr. W. A. Forsyth, Mr. Quintin E. Gurney, Mr. C. A. 
