The coastline surrounding Southend from Chalkwell to Thorpe Bay has been a tourist hotspot for people; often urban residents from London, to enjoy the sea air. Sun shelters of varying styles can be found all along the shore and clifftops, some as old as the early Victorian era. We managed to find one abandoned off…
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St. Botolph’s Priory was an Augustinian religious house in Colchester, Essex, between c.1100 and 1536. It is Grade I listed and can be walked around today in a public park; owned by English Heritage. Whilst it is now only a ruin, it still bears intricate architectural features such as The Pardon Door archway (pictured) and…
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On the edges of Camulodunum; ancient Colchester, there once stood an Iron Age defence system – part of a greater one spanning the circumference of the town. This is now roughly where Lexden is. Earthern ramparts defending the west side of Camulodunum were built roughly between 25 and 1 BC, and still remain today at…
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What now stands as a strange overgrown mound of earth piling high into the sky, squeezed behind a car park near Rayleigh high street, was once the site of a Norman motte-and-bailey castle. Rayleigh Castle, or Rayleigh Mount as it is sometimes known, was recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086 and was the only…
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The history of the garrison dates back to 1849 when the land was first purchased by the Board of Ordanance. Woolwich Common was usually used for testing weapons, although as they became more powerful, they needed a new, larger site. During the Crimean War, the Royal Artillery School of Gunnery was established at Shoeburyness and…
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It’s the final two weeks of the Poppy Wave sculpture in Shoeburyness and we decided to take a look before the wave of poppies move onto it’s next location in Plymouth. Shoeburyness was chosen to host ‘Wave’ due to the efforts of the town during the First World War. The Garrison provided crucial training for…
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Only a handful of Iron Age sites still remain in England, with most lost to nature and seemingly destroyed over time. If you walk around the back of an industrial estate in Chelmsford, you’ll come across a rare surviving enclosure which is thought to date back 3000 years to 1000-700BC. Evidence suggests that the site…
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When the land was first bought by the RSPB in 2006, one of their first jobs was to sweep the land to see if any unexploded World War Two bombs lie undisturbed beneath the surface. Around £50,000 was spent on an ex-military team who were drafted in to use specialist technology to scan the earth….
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(Left) Replica red hill created at RSPB Bower’s Marsh nature reserve, Canvey Island. (Right) An actual site of a Red Hill. A faint hill remains between Waterside Sports Centre and Cornelius Vermuyden Secondary School (unclear if this is due to Red Hill works). (Bottom) Artists impression Before Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden reclaimed Canvey from the sea in the…
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The Occidental Jetty is a Canvey Island landmark that we quite admire. It was built with the intention of pumping oil from ships into the semi-complete Occidental Oil Refinery, abandoned due to the 1973 Oil Crisis’ legacy. You can see the pipes alongside it today. Two industrial containers rot ontop to this very day –…
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