The parish was created in 967CE, and a church was established here during the
Anglo-Saxon period. The current church, Holy Trinity and All Saints, mostly dates back to the 16th century and its tower is tall. The lean-to chapel north of the chancel is from the 13th century and could have been an
anchorite's cell but is more likely to have been an early example of a
vestry or
sacristy. The porch dates from about 1459. and is recorded in the
Domesday Book of 1086 as
Wintretona or
Wintretuna. The ''Fisherman's Return'', a brick and flint
public house, dates from the end of the 17th century. The hazardous nature of the coastline at Winterton is indicated by
Winterton Lighthouse which was established during the 17th century and operated until the early 20th century. In the late 18th century
marram grass was planted to stabilise the coastline against sea encroachments, and by the early 19th century there was a barrier of dunes between high water mark and the ridge on which the lighthouse stood, leaving a valley between. During
World War II,
anti-invasion defences were constructed around Winterton-on-Sea. They included a number of
pillboxes. The beaches were protected with unusually extensive
barriers of scaffolding and large numbers of anti-tank cubes. Between 1851 and 1861 a number of Winterton families migrated south to
Caister-on-Sea. Many of those families joined the Caister Beachmen and founded arguably the basis of the modern
Lifeboat service. The most notable of these men was
James Haylett. Edward Fawcett was a Winterton fisherman who joined the
Royal Navy. He sailed with Captain
James Clark Ross on 's exploration of the Antarctic as
boatswain's mate. He was not on
Erebus when it made its fatal Arctic voyage under Sir
John Franklin, but took part in one of the attempted rescues in as part of the
McClure Arctic Expedition and was in the first group of people to travel through the
North West Passage. The crew of
Investigator were trapped for three years in the pack ice before making contact via sledging expeditions with and abandoning their ship.
Resolute was in turn also trapped in the ice and abandoned, and the survivors marched across the ice to
Beechey Island from where other ships returned them home. Fawcett spent his retirement in Winterton. ==Art and literature==