I live just near the town centre and I can remember the floods, all the houses were ruined, it ruined my house and my dad died there, it is so upsetting.

GRAHAM ULTIN

I am disgusted that after all the effort and money spent on sea defences in the aftermath of the 1953 floods to protect our coastline from repeat disasters, the current Government will not fund the renewal of them as they pass the end of their working life.

Take Happisburgh as a case in point - just a few miles up the coast from Sea Palling where the sea made a major incursion in 1953, and up to 12m of land is being lost a month now that the defences have failed.

It is widely accepted, even by Government ministers, that a breach at Happisburgh would be a threat to the Norfolk Broads.

How can this be allowed to happen?

JIM WHITESIDE, HAPPISBURGH

The floods are indelibly impressed on my memory and have influenced where I have lived ever since - on the top of a hill!

I was six years old. I woke up to find my baby-sitter 'Bassie' sleeping on the settee downstairs. My parents were not in their room. It was the first time I had experienced the fear of separation. We lived in Gorleston and my parents could not get back down Southtown Road after an evening out in Yarmouth, the water at 10pm was too high and still rising very fast.

My mother told me later they just had to turn back. I went to stay with friends, the first time I had ever been away from my parents. It was a very strange time. An uncanny sadness pervaded the small town.

Hushed conversations and wet, cold, uncertainty became normal for a while. Dank smells and remnants of the damage were with us for months and years to come. My father stayed in Great Yarmouth organising the food and housing relief programme and was later awarded an OBE. My mother came home a few days later via Norwich.

The devastating effects of the flooding in Great Yarmouth in 1953 have been indelibly etched on my mind ever since. The salt water ruined carpets. They were piled up outside the houses in Southtown, Cobham and the cottages near Gorleston Harbour once the water subsided.

My best friend lived down there, next to the Pavilion and Floral Hall (now the Ocean Room) in a large house tucked under the cliff. The plaster was stripped from the walls to waist height and for months,even years afterwards the damp and salt that had penetrated the brickwork on that wretched night seeped out to a cacophony of coughing from my friend's Mum.

The floods and their aftermath are the earliest and most vivid memory I have of my childhood. I live now, as I always have done, on the top of a hill.

SUE MILLAR, LONDON

My father, Mr R.W. (Billy) Bishop now a very bright 91 was one of those that risked his life. He and another brave man that could not swim set out into the rising flood waters in a small rowing boat to rescue a 16-year-old lad (known to many as Buttercup Jo on local radio) from the roof of a pig shed on the marshes at Cley.

They had to travel quite a way to find a boat as they were on the green near the church, by the time they got back with it it was getting dark. The boy was in a bad way with the cold. He was hardly able to move, the shed roof was covered in rats that were also seeking safety.

My father tells this far better than I can, he has a lovely North Norfolk accent.

My father tells the tale of events as they unfolded in the village of Cley from the start to the task of getting the area cleared after the flood. He was walking with one of his daughters in the village and she said what's that horrible smell dad, It was the marsh mud and seawater churning as the water broke through the bank. He sent her home to warn the family and he went onto warn some of those that lived in the lowest part of the village.

He tells of going to the cottage of Rose Massingham (an elderly lady) as he got there he founde her asleep with her feet up, the water was already in the room and was just reaching her coal fire which was starting to hiss and steam. She had quite a surprise when Dad woke her up.

He and the other man in the small boat never got any recognition for what they did, they were just as brave as the American soldier that got a medal.

SUE WHITE, SCARNING