[3] Between the village and the North Sea are Winterton Dunes which include a 109 hectares (270 acres) National Nature Reserve and are inhabited by several notable species such as the natterjack toad.

[8] The current church, Holy Trinity and All Saints, mostly dates back to the 16th century and its tower is 132 feet (40 m) tall.

[8] Some historians believe that the village was the seasonal "tun", meaning settlement, of farmers from East Somerton who were fishermen during the winter.

The crew of Investigator were trapped for three years in the pack ice before making contact via sledging expeditions with HMS Resolute and abandoning their ship.

[16][17][18] Daniel Defoe mentions the village in Robinson Crusoe and A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, published in 1719 and from 1724 respectively.

In 1864 the novelist Wilkie Collins visited the village while preparing Armadale, and met nineteen-year-old Martha Rudd who became his unmarried partner.

[19][20] He was an admirer of Defoe and in particular of Robinson Crusoe, which is referred to many times in his subsequent novel The Moonstone, and wanted to explore the area where the character was initially shipwrecked.

[20] The author and communist Sylvia Townsend Warner, one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, frequently stayed with Valentine Ackland at Hill House and they both wrote poetry inspired by the Winterton beach and dunes.

[19] Between the mid 1950s and the early 1970s Leslie Davenport, a member of the Norwich Twenty Group of painters, led up to 200 artists, writers and musicians living on the beach and dunes for six weeks every summer.