| A Passion for Essex |
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You know you’re entering the Promised Land when London’s suburbs make
one final twist and flop at the roadside in exhaustion and suddenly out
of the car or train window, you see for the first time a horizon. And
what a horizon!
Honeysuckle hedgerows of childhood skip to ancient woodland and hamlets pierced by flint church spires. For more years than I care to remember I’ve been enthusing about the beauty of the Essex coastline and rolling countryside, the exquisiteness of its villages and great pubs, its enormous cultural legacy and lively art scene. Now it seems everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Suddenly Essex is cool! In just one week recently, an assistant editor at the Guardian told me he couldn’t wait for the weekend when he’d be back sailing the finely fretted coast, feted chef Rick Stein waxed lyrical to me about Mersea Island’s Company Shed restaurant; a north London architect raved about the groundbreaking design of the new visual arts space in Colchester, and a doctor confessed she was selling up her country home in Suffolk to relocate to Essex because it was ‘more interesting, more beautiful and more real’. What took them so long? Local artists have always known about the country’s uniqueness and beauty: Constable working his rustic idylls beneath those East Anglican skies, Sir Alfred Munnings capturing his much-loved equestrian world, and Edward Bawden creating copper engravings of the swirling countryside and then transposing them into wallpaper designs. Today, James Dodds, one of the hottest artists around, continues the artist/craftsmen tradition with the meticulous eyes of a shipwright. James lives in Wivenhoe as does Martin Newell, a much published poet who takes walking and cycling tours (‘Spoke ‘n’ Word’) through the countryside. Essex seems to teem with such artist luminaries who continue interpreting and celebrating their very special environment. In 2006 I presented an 11- part Anglia television series called Coastal Inspiration in which I interviewed James, Martin and many others about the influence on them of their particular landscape. Invariably they said they could not imagine living anywhere else. Architecturally too the county is increasingly influential. Its most recent award for craftsmanship and design was for the sleek carbon-neutral RSPB visitor centre at Rainham Marshes. And a new display cabinet will probably be needed when firstsite, Rafael Viñoly’s sensational £16.5 million visual art space is unveiled in Colchester at the end of 2008. Alongside dazzling art and architecture, another crucial component of a successful short break is grazing market stalls and eating at memorable restaurants. Fortunately a weekly farmers’ market does the rounds of Essex and so wherever you happen to be, you should be in easy reach of one. To wash down your nibbles, the county also boasts six vineyards all offering tastings – the Romans, as you’d expect, left far more than fortresses and villas behind them from their Essex holiday! Another essential ingredient for my perfect weekend is being able to stretch my legs in great walking country. And where better than beside Essex’s estuaries where gulls wheel over coppered mudflats and canted boats; or strolling inland across the wooded hills and vales. If cycling is more your thing, you can take the 69 mile long Painter’s Trail, discovering more of this sublime gently rolling agricultural landscape broke by Dedham church and the mills and barns that Constable immortalised in the 19th century. As the great man himself acknowledged, ‘those scenes made me a painter’. Although over 70 percent of Essex is rural, a notable exception is Colchester - Britain’s first Roman capital, the country’s oldest recorded town and also the scene of Boudica’s rout of the Romans. My latest arrival in town commenced as it was rubbing the sleep from its eyes, the mist lifting off the river Colne and kids chasing each other through Castle Park on their way to school. The park provides the pretty backdrop to Europe’s largest Norman keep. The castle itself was built with the Roman brick left when Boudica destroyed the Temple of Claudius on this site. Nowadays children instead try on armour and make Roman lamps before heading down to the jails to be spooked by stories of the evil ‘witchfinder’ General Matthew Hopkins, who was responsible for the execution of 74 women as witches. That first evening in town I went to the Mercury Theatre to see Meeting Joe Strummer, a two-man show that had been a big hit at the Edinburgh Festival. With five performance spaces in all, Colchester always has something on and is destined to really grab the headlines in 2008 when Rafael Viñoly’s sensational new arts venue opens for Colchester what the Opera House did for Sydney. Here, inside a 140 metre long, gold-coloured, scimitar-shaped exhibition space, you’ll be able to explore contemporary art, experience the University of Essex collection of Latin American art, take part in a lively learning programme or just meet friends for a drink or a meal. A feature of the building will be a Roman mosaic, laid in the floor where it was originally found. Just a slingshot away, the country’s only Roman Circus was simultaneously being uncovered. It’s that kind of place: dig anywhere and you’re pretty much guaranteed another historic discovery. Alongside its hugely respected zoo and several other important museums, the town is surely destined to join Bath, York and Stratford-upon-Avon in the premier league of outstanding weekend break destinations. Despite it’s proximity to London Essex has long been England’s best kept secret. I was reminded of this fact in Dedham church where a highly buffed 18th century memorial brass plaque on a family vault wisely declared, ‘we stand too near to see ourselves’. This is particularly true of those living in Essex who often don’t realise what they’ve got on their doorstep. For the rest of the country, however, the secret is now out and more and more people are set to discover that ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ was composed by Jane Taylor, the daughter of a local vicar in Colchester; that ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ was written by the delightfully named Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould in between fathering 13 children and serving as vicar of East Mersea; and that George Washington’s great grandfather used to be the vicar at Purleigh church. The secrets waiting to be discovered don’t only concern the clergy. Did you know Hitchcock got the inspiration for his chilling movies around Burnham-on-Crouch where HG Wells also choose to set his alien invasion in War of the Worlds? Essex was even home to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who some believe to have been the real author of many of Shakespeare’s works! Today his ancestral home, Hedingham Castle, a Norman keep built c.1140, is still owned by one of his descendents and is open to visitors. As in Colchester, wherever you dig in Essex, you’ll uncover another gem. Pop into Dedham church and you’ll find The Ascension painted by Constable hanging on the wall; book into the youth hostel in Saffron Walden and you’ll check into a listed half-timbered Elizabethan building; pop into Chelmsford’s Sandford Mill Museum and you’ll see the hut from where Marconi transmitted his first radio broadcast in February 1992 heralding the communication revolution. In Southend, famed for having the longest pleasure pier in the world, a Saxon burial chamber, believed to be as rich as that found at Sutton Hoo, has recently been uncovered. Plans are now being considered to build a £30 million attraction to house it. But even before this major attraction is unveiled, the town already has a cultural parallel universe co-existing alongside its top fun park Adventure Island and Sealife Centre. At the eastern end of the town is Southchurch Hall and Museum, a late 13th century moated hall with pretty hardens and pond. Prittlewell Priory is even older, dating back to 1110 and housing an important collection of early radios, televisions and gramophones as well as wildlife and local history displays. On Southend’s western flank is the Beecroft Art Gallery with exhibits ranging from 17th century Dutch masters to contemporary works. Located in nearby Chalkwell Park is the HQ of metal, a contemporary artists’ think tank formed for their AGA dinner evenings hosted by the likes of actor Ian McKellen and singer/songwriter Billy Bragg. The town has three theatres including the Cliffs Pavilion which puts on everything from blockbuster West End shows (at one-third West End prices!) to stand up comedy, chamber recitals and rock bands. And the University of Essex’s Southend Campus will soon be pitching in too with a little performance space in the Nelson Street Reform Church. This cultural smorgasbord is of course in addition to the town’s three Blue Flag and seven Quality Coast Award beaches and the seven miles foreshore whose entirety is designated a Site of Scientific Special Importance because of its significance as a migratory stopover for birds. To the west of Southend is ultra-cool Leigh-on-Sea where cockle sheds and traditional fishing fleets rub shoulders with stylish art galleries. Not to be missed is the annual Leigh Art Trail. Out on the mudflats in autumn, 4,500 Brent Geese wing in from their 2,500 mile trip from Siberia for a bit of eel grass. Fortunately we humans get considerably better fare in fashionable seafront restaurants. Each time you visit Essex, you discover a little more. In 2003 I travelled its incomparably beautiful coastline for my last book ‘The Coast Road’ and discovered backwaters unlike any others in the British Isles. There is something of Arthur Ransome’s ‘Secret Water’ about its waterfronts and place names; Dedham, Dengie, Brightlingsea, Wivenhoe, Burnham-on-Crouch, Blackwater and Hamford Water. Dedham itself is populated by pretty cottages and porticoed Georgian homes, sundials, sleepy shutters, wisteria-clad bijoux teahouses and even a pink vicarage. It is as gorgeous as the Cotswold’s Broadway but doesn’t feel like it’s been pickled for American tourists. And speaking of Americans, there’s something redolent of New England in Dedham’s leafy high street, weatherboard homes and white picket fences but this should really come as no surprise as many families migrated from Essex to New England from the early 17th century onwards. The Shermans of Dedham are even said to have founded the State of Rhode Island. Today each of Essex’s towns has been settled by colonies of artists and for good reason. Dedham is no more exquisite or quintessentially English than Great Dunmow with its weatherboard thatched cottages, its Doctor’s Pond and grey-blue Elizabethan Clockhouse. Great Dunmow is no less perfect than little Dunmow with its crenellated parish church and gorgeous countryside hanging to its shirt tails. And Great Bardfield with its pastel-coloured rainbow of Georgian homes and Finchingfield, reputedly the most photographed village in England, can also give any town a run for its money as prettiest in Britain. Everyone has his or her own favourite. My own happens to be Thaxted whose 180-foot church spire and arcaded 15th century Guildhall were built from the wealth of the wool barons. Amongst its teahouses and antique shops, you’ll find a plague marking the home of the composer Gustav Holst and on the edge of town, John Webb’s windmill (now a rural museum). Don’t miss the latter and do make sure you walk up the cobblestones of Stone Lane with its hanging baskets and coach lamps abutting pargeted half timber homes. I swear there isn’t a finer town in the British Isles! By Paul Gogarty |