[10] In 1086, the incoming Norman aristocracy had a simple church built on the site of the current tall stone one.

The tall tower of St Mary's church is an important landmark to mariners, as it warns of the position of the treacherous nearby sandbanks.

A new staircase was added to the top of the tower in 2001, in memory of the Happisburgh schoolboy Thomas Marshall, who was murdered in nearby Eccles on Sea in 1997.

[14] A small boathouse was built in a similar site (52°49′28″N 1°32′10″E / 52.824326°N 1.536101°E / 52.824326; 1.536101) in 1965 to house a D-class inshore lifeboat that went into service in June of that year.

[14][15] The station has been honoured with an RNLI Silver Medal, awarded in 1886 to Coxswain John Cannon in acknowledgment of his long and valuable service.

[14] The main land use is a private garden to the homes here, forming an ornate 19th-century estate on the site of fields until the middle of that century.

It is mainly a grade II listed (starting category) listed park and garden, having been designed as an Arts and Crafts movement garden by Detmar Blow to accompany the butterfly-plan summer home for wealthy landowner Albemarle Cator, seated at Woodbastwick Hall, Woodbastwick, who decided to build homes or gatehouses for his family.

The north end of the largest, his home, was destroyed by a bomb, and was restored by Christobel Tabor (née Cator) after the war.

[20] Initiatives in the town to adapt to climate change and sea level rise have included a government-funded relocation scheme for owners of threatened homes.

[21] In 2023, there were plans to move inland a car park —built with reusable materials for this purpose— that risked falling into the cliff.

[22] In 2010, Simon Parfitt and colleagues from University College London discovered flint tools near Happisburgh.

The flints were probably left by hunter-gatherers of the human species Homo antecessor who inhabited the flood plains and marshlands that bordered an ancient course of the river Thames.

[7] There is a local legend dating from the 16th century that Happisburgh is haunted by the ghost of a murdered smuggler.