St. Johns’ Abbey was a very wealthy Benedictine abbey situated in Colchester, Essex. It functioned between 1096 and 1539. All that survives today is this stunning gatehouse built around 1400. It is now owned by English Heritage and is Grade I listed – you can walk through it publicly today. The structure is architecturally beautiful;…
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Turn back the clock to 1850 and Canvey Island little more than farmland and a small village, much like the Wild West. Only few of these actually remain today, with Brickhouse Farm being one of the only still in operation. So, where did all the rest go? Well, a majority became left abandoned due to…
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Known as either Canvey Island’s Heritage Centre or St Katherine’s Church, this building stands proud along Long Road. Towards the second-half of the 19th Century, Victorian Canvey was undergoing true establishment as a village, rather than just farmland. With a new church, St. Katherine’s, built in 1875, a village well, constructed in 1879, and numerous other…
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The current seawall that encircles Canvey Island was a late 1970s upgrade to the 1950s wall that was the first to be made out of concrete in response to the dated earthen mounds that failed to stand the test of the tide in the 1953 floods. The current wall, finished in the early 1980s, was…
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Lt. Col. Horace Percy Fielder could be considered the man to whom established Canvey as a residential area. A few decades before, at the turn of the century, Frederick Hester established Canvey as a tourist plotland area (read more here). However, Fielder could be considered the first to put Canvey on the map as a day…
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Rayleigh Dutch Cottage at Crown Hill has a past as strange as it’s appearance. Whilst a sign above its door denotes ‘1621’, analysis suggests it was instead likely to have been built around 1740. It is aesthetically similar to the two dutch cottages on Canvey Island dating from the early 17th Century. Whilst the exact…
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Rayleigh Windmill is a grade II-listed mill which was built in 1809 for local timber trader Thomas Higgs. He became bankrupt in 1815 and the mill was sold on to numerous individuals. It was the last of five mills which served the town throughout history. The mill had to be repaired in or just after…
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Layer Marney Tower is a Grade I gigantic Tudor palace not too far from Colchester in North Essex. The main structure visible is actually an elaborate gatehouse and main range, and there is also a contemporary barn and church on the grounds. It is in fact the tallest Tudor gatehouse in Britain. Like other palaces…
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Jewel Tower is an overlooked treasure English Heritage holds directly opposite from The Houses of Parliament. It was built from 1365-66 to house the personal treasures of King Edward III – like a giant safe. Then in the early 17th Century the House of Lords used it as a records office, holding valuable documents. It…
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Pictured is Borley Church, and Borley Cottage which is of similar architectural qualities to the rectory, standing directly next to it Built in 1862 by the Reverend Henry Bull for his family, this Gothic Victorian red-brick rectory was placed on the site of an old monastery. Stories claim that a monk living at the monastery…
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