Walk along the public right of way at Sunny Point at the start of the Naze cliffs and you will pass a cluster of bungalows boundaried by two very old looking walls with a globe on top of two tall columns.

Previously this three-acre site was the location of one of the grandest buildings in Walton, the Samuel Lewis convalescent home.

It was built in 1909 in a free Georgian style faced in red bricks with Ancaster Stone dressings with a Brosley Red Tiled roof.

It was formally opened after a ceremony on May 4, 1910.

It was built by the Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor from the East End of London with funds from a bequest in the will of Samuel Lewis.

Some 35,000 Jews lived in the East End of London in 1880, and within 30 years, largely as a result of a mass exodus from Eastern Europe due to persecution, their numbers had grown to 120,000.

The 16 member Committee of Management was made up of a number notable figures, including Cecil Sebag-Montefiore and Leopold de Rothschild.

The convalescent home’s magnificent grounds and gardens were laid out by Norcutts, of Woodbridge, with lawns and shrubberies to the sea-facing frontage and a kitchen garden at the rear-facing Old Hall Lane.

Sun shelters were erected in the front gardens one of which had a weather vane in the shape of a small whale. It is currently on top of the roof of Walton Maritime Museum located in the Old Lifeboat House near the Coastguard Station.

During its first eight months, the home accommodated 416 patients, 103 of whom came direct from London hospitals.

In 1943, the home was occupied by the military and a bomb dropped by a German bomber demolished the north wing of the home, which had to be rebuilt. The home could take 60 patients at any one time and required 17 live-in staff.

The rabbi would visit frequently and stayed in Sunny Point next to the Southern Boundary wall, where the Ruckert family looked after him.

There was a synagogue in Saville Street, but this was re-located to the home in 1966. During the 1970s, it was sadly demolished to create the present small estate of bungalows.

A beautiful building sacrificed on the altar of greed and profit.