Victoria County History of Essex

Clacton group receives VCH Outstanding Contribution Award

Representatives of Essex VCH were delighted to attend the annual VCH day on Thursday 14 May, to see the Clacton VCH group be given an Outstanding Contribution Award.

The VCH day, held at the Institute for Historical Research at Senate House in London, is a chance for VCH groups from across the country to come together to hear updates from the central VCH team.

Shirley Duran receiving the award from Professor Catherine Clarke on behalf of the Clacton volunteer group

The event was chaired by Professor Catherine Clarke, the national Director of the VCH. Catherine shared updates on latest developments, including an exciting extension of the successful Layers of London project (more on this to follow).

Catherine also presented the Outstanding Contribution Awards, including the one to the Clacton VCH group. The Awards recognise ‘truly exceptional contributions’ to the work of the Victoria County History.

The Clacton Group is one of the longest-running groups in the country, having been founded in 2002. It has produced many successful publications including Clacton at War, and Defending the Coast.

Shirley Durgan was pleased to collect the award on behalf of all the members of the Clacton group, chaired by Roger Kennell, who was unable to attend the event in person.

The Home Front and civilian morale in Harwich and Dovercourt

To mark the uploading of our latest draft history on Harwich and Dovercourt during WW2, VCH contributing editor Dr Andrew Senter has written this blog examining civilian morale during the conflict.

During the Second World War civilian morale on the Home Front was maintained by a variety of means. All denominations of the church played a role in maintaining spirits early in the war: the vicar of Dovercourt, Revd Herbert P. Statham, declared the war a ‘noble cause’; Revd Father Bernard Clay of the Catholic Church said that ‘people should pray still for the attainment of a just peace and protection’ and Methodist pastor, Revd J. Frederick Etchells, preached against ‘bitterness and hatred’. The church continued to play an important role in times of need: local churches participated in the first National Day of Prayer in 1940 and several further such observances were carried out during the war.

Soon the realities of war began to affect morale. One of the first local casualties was Stephen Keating, a Trinity House pilot who was reported missing when his steamer was torpedoed in the North Sea in October; he was buried in Dovercourt in December 1939. The mined ships Simon Bolivar and HMS Gipsy sank in November close to Harwich harbour and the explosion of the Terukuni Maru was witnessed from the seafront. In each case the survivors were landed at Harwich.

The air raids that took place from 1940 tested civilian morale. In Harwich, intelligence reports in May stated that air activity had ‘no effect on [the] population who are used to it’. However, one Dovercourt tradesman took his own life and was recorded at the inquest as having an ‘obsession that he would be bombed’. The more intense raids of 1941 brought further hardship and the first deaths though a contemporary ARP report from the raid of 25–26 February made a point of stating that morale was ‘good’. Shortly afterwards Revd Statham commented in the parish magazine that the crisis was bringing ‘closer comradeship’. The following year Revd Statham urged: ‘[w]hen you have something cheerful to say, say it. Otherwise keep quiet and smile’. In fact, many civilians reacted spiritedly during raids as in the case of the bombing of Warner’s holiday camp in Dovercourt in 1944, when dancers formed volunteer parties to aid casualties.

In 1943 the morality of certain war methods was debated in the local press, with Revd Statham questioning the Allied bombing policy and Councillors Thomas Bernard and Edward Auston, among others, defending the necessity. In a letter to the Harwich and Dovercourt Standard one local resident was troubled by the practice of children sticking savings stamps on bombs to be dropped on Germany as part of the ‘Wings for Victory’ campaign.

Civilians also participated in the propaganda war in other ways. When a newspaper titled ‘A last appeal to reason by Adolf Hitler’ was dropped over Harwich in July 1940, one former Dovercourt resident who had since moved to Scotland saw it as an opportunity to fundraise for the war effort by charging to view the material.

Local residents were regularly kept up to date in the newspapers with how the schoolchildren who had been evacuated to Gloucestershire and Herefordshire were faring. The newspapers also carried regular reports of the fate of servicemen abroad, particularly the whereabouts of captured prisoners after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. The Harwich and Dovercourt Standard also told of the case of Phyllis Argall, daughter of Dovercourt pastor C. B. K. Argall, who was a journalist in Tokyo. In 1942 she was arrested on trumped-up charges of betraying secrets and only escaped a sentence of 18 months’ hard labour through diplomatic exchanges. The full horror of war was brought home in 1945 in a letter to his parents from a local soldier who was present at the liberation of a concentration camp in Germany, describing the ‘skeletons just covered with skin’ as a ‘sickening sight’.

A number of local men successfully registered as conscientious objectors at the East Anglian tribunal in Cambridge, including in 1940 Methodist preacher, William Barker, and Plymouth Brethren member, John Carter, both from Dovercourt. Local attitudes to these cases were not recorded.

Dr Senter’s draft chapter on Harwich and Dovercourt during WW2 is available to view and download on our draft histories page. Constructive comments and corrections are always welcome!

Lord Howard’s Larder – VCH Luncheon at Lambard’s Salthouse, Harwich, 7 March 2026

In support of the VCH Essex Trust and its work on Harwich [Red Book Vol XIII], Nick May, the owner and landlord of the Lambard’s Salthouse restaurant in Harwich, ran a fundraising luncheon special menu. On 7 March there was a special occasion at which the former county editor, Chris Thornton, gave a short talk on the background of Lord John Howard’s career, his relation to Harwich and the food his household bought during Howard’s stay in Lent in 1481.

Former county editor Chris Thornton giving a short talk

John Howard (1425-1485), who started out as a minor East Anglian gentleman, became through marriage and patronage of the Yorkist kings an extremely wealthy and well-connected baron in the area. He was descended from royalty on both sides of his family and was great grandfather of Catherine Howard and Anne Boleyn and great, great grandfather of Elizabeth I. As Chris Thornton told us in his fascinating talk, Thomas Howard was a close friend and loyal supporter of Richard III (with whom he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485). Just two years before his death he was created Duke of Norfolk after the male Mowbray line of dukes had died out. Howard was actively involved at Harwich from the 1460s onwards and his household accounts contain information on the fitting out and resupply of naval vessels in the harbour. In 1466 he built both a new private quay and began the construction of a stone ‘castle’, probably in the form of a defensive tower.

But turning back to the presence, a packed house of diners was regaled with a delicious 6-course menu, using ingredients available in Lent in the later 15th century, inspired by the inventory of the larder of John Howard. On the menu was mainly seafood (e.g., oysters, herring, cod, lobster) with a few ‘allowances’ of luxuries like butter and different wines to the different courses! It was not only the food that was outstanding. The attention to detail with sealed menu cards and little letters of indulgence, pardoning the diners from eating and drinking things which should not be consumed during Lent.

Nick May, owner and landlord of Lambard’s Salthouse, telling attendees about the food

At intervals between the courses, Nick appeared from the kitchen to tell us about the next course and its ingredients and historic significance. He was obviously passionate about the food and getting everything just right. I think everyone there would agree that this was a truly magical – and delicious – experience, a feast for the senses.

Ken Crowe and Herbert Eiden

The VCH and Newport

In this blog post, VCH Essex Trustee Ben Cowell looks at links between the VCH and the village of Newport, which was the subject of the very first ‘Short’ volume published by the Trust.

The VCH Red Book volumes for Essex have yet to reach Uttlesford in the north-west of the county. Nevertheless, Newport in Uttlesford is one of three contributions that Essex has made to the VCH Shorts series (the other two being Harwich, Dovercourt and Parkestone in the 19^th century and, more recently, Southend).

Cover of the VCH Newport ‘short’ volume (2015)

How did Newport become the subject of one of the very first of the VCH Shorts? Much of the answer derives from the mutually supportive relationship between the village and the VCH over the last half-century.

Perhaps because of its nucleated centre, there has always been a close-knit community feel to life in Newport. For centuries, village life here has revolved around three things: the parish church (the present-day form of which started to take shape 800 years ago, in the first half of the 13^th century), the school (formerly the Free Grammar founded by a bequest of 1588 and now the Joyce Frankland Academy), and the village’s shops, which fulfill the function today formerly served by Newport’s market place, located on land to the east of the church sloping down to the waters of the river Cam.

The strength of Newport’s sense of community has been greatly enhanced since 1974 by its biannual village magazine, Newport News. Originally an A5-sized newsletter prepared using a typewriter and an overheated mimeographic copying machine, Newport News is now a glossy full-colour and highly professional production. All 104 (and counting) issues are available to view on the Newport News website.

From the outset, Newport News aimed to be a record of local history. Its founding editorial made clear that one of the purposes of the publication was to cover ‘the history of the village with contributions from senior citizens,’ in order to throw ‘a fascinating light on the past which disappears so quickly’ (NN 1, p. 3).

As early as June 1977, the magazine advertised a call for volunteer researchers into village history to support the work of the Victoria County History in Essex. A history group was formed at around this time under the leadership of Denis Archer (editor of Jane’s Infantry Weapons), and then, after Denis’s untimely death, Bernard Nurse, a published historian who became librarian to the Society of Antiquaries. (The history of Newport’s history group is covered in the latest edition of the Saffron Walden Historical Journal.)

The extensive researches undertaken by Bernard Nurse and the other members of the history group meant that sufficient material had been assembled to form the basis of a detailed and fully illustrated book, A Village in Time, published by Newport News, which won the 1996 Essex Book Award for Best Local Society Published Book.

The two subsequent chairs of Newport’s history group (Prof Anthony Tuck, and then myself) both had close links with Prof John Beckett, who was chair of the VCH nationally at the time the VCH Short series first got up and running.

Anthony Tuck, a retired professor of medieval history, reinvigorated Newport’s history group on his arrival in the village. A team was assembled under Anthony’s leadership to develop work on a new history of the village in the form of the Newport VCH Short.

Newport’s Short was published in 2015. As well as meeting fully the exacting historical standards set by the VCH, the Short served as a showcase for some of the detailed research that had been undertaken in the village by individuals such as David Evans, Newport’s local history Recorder.

Given that the VCH was the spur for the foundation of Newport’s Local History Group in 1977, it is fitting that the village has had its history produced as one of the Shorts.

Group shot of the Newport Local History Group c.1995, featuring (from left to right) Brian Lock, Barry Heaton, Jean George, Imogen Mollet, Angela Archer, Bernard Nurse, Joy Pugh, Terry Searle, and John Gordon

The ongoing existence of the village magazine, founded by John Gordon in 1974, has been an important factor in keeping the flame of local historical investigation alive. In 1988, the then VCH county editor for Essex, Janet Cooper, declared that a half of all the material on Newport’s history held at the VCH’s offices in Chelmsford derived from Newport News (NN30, p.11).

As I am now both the chair of the Newport Local History Group, and a trustee of the VCH in Essex, I hope I am able to do my bit to promote the long-standing and mutually supportive relationship between the village and the VCH.

Ben Cowell

The Newport Short is available to purchase at Hart’s Books and the Tourist Information Centre in Saffron Walden.

We also have copies of the book available for sale at a cost per copy of £16 including United Kingdom P&P from VCH Essex, c/o Essex Record, Wharf Road, Chelmsford, CM2 6YT

Cheques should be made payable to Victoria County History of Essex Trust.

Overseas purchasers please contact us for additional postage costs.

Southend Short Book Review

We were delighted that our recent short publication, Southend, Victorian Town and Resort by Ken Crowe et al was reviewed by Simon Coxall in the most recent Friends of Historic Essex newsletter. We thank Simon and the Friends for permission to reproduce the review on our blog.

Ken Crowe, with I. Yearsley, J. Butler, E. Simpson & J. Williams, The Victoria History of Essex: Southend, Victorian Town and Resort (London, 2025), pp. xi & 131. ISBN 978-1-915249-87-6, £14.99.

Essex has more than its fair share of ancient settlements. Places where good soils and fresh streams like Prittlewell’s ‘babbling brook’ attracted people to put down roots. A few places however, though proud of their ancient past, are a fascinating product of that commercial spirit born of a revolutionary age powered by the steam engine and the pursuit of leisure.

Ken Crowe’s newly published book, the latest in the Victoria County History series, lifts the curtain on the performance that saw Prittlewell grow from a village of 13 houses in 1769 to the burgeoning Victorian resort and borough of Southend in the late 19^th century.

Like so much of Essex the villages of Leigh, Eastwood, the Wakerings, Prittlewell and Shoebury have their beginnings as rural settlements. With their churches and a few cottages each made an often scratchy living tilling the land, fishing the waters and farming the oyster beds. Manorial lords whether the Boleyns, the Rich, Earls of Warwick, or the religious estates of Prittlewell Priory reaped the dividends, while a day trip back then might merely involve a visit to the ancient markets of Rochford or Rayleigh.

Then, as revolutionary wars spread across Europe, a coach service stretched out from London to the distant ‘south-end’ of Prittlewell. The 8 hour rickety ride has only some similarities with arterial road queues of later ages. But it was steam that kick-started Southend’s seaside boom.

Who knew the famous Southend pier had its origins in landing stages for the steam packets plying the Thames down from London? Built in 1846, despite the perennial wrangles over its maintenance, by 1895 the pier welcomed 600,000 visitors in the summer season. But it was the arrival of the railway that like some ‘build a city’ computer game would sculpt the Southend we know today.

The genteel folk of the Royal Terrace may have had reservations about the iron horse’s arrival, but cutting the journey time from London to just over an hour ensured the town a prosperous future. Driven by entrepreneurs, Southend’s ‘dry and salubrious air’ attracted crowds of Londoners seeking ‘a popular and delightful place of summer sojourn.’

Early settlers let their rooms to day trippers. Railway excursions with lunch thrown in attracted future buyers of seaside mansions created from the ground-up by Southend’s burgeoning brickworks. Bathing machines, donkey rides, ventriloquists, Italian ice cream and ‘speak your weight’ amusements soon followed. Already the West cliffs beckoned City workers fresh from their commute from the capital, while the flat lands east of Pier Hill found room for the less well-heeled. It was not long before first generation settlers expressed concern about incoming tides of the ‘lower class of excursionists’. By the Edwardian period, Prittlewell’s population had grown from 1,541 to 57,772 in just a hundred years.

Ken’s detailed exploration of the birth of Southend conjures up a town very much on the frontiers of the nascent tourism industry. Here hard-nosed business combined with the frothy jollity of countless Londoners, who, freed by the first ever Bank holidays in 1871, created the resort we know today. As one who trod its streets for several years, Ken’s book brings its Victorian avenues, smugglers inns, its leafy squares, grassy cliffs and bustling streets to life. The Victorian mansions, grand hotels and terraced former boarding houses of a town created almost overnight which Ken guides us through, all of them witnesses to a Victorian revolution no less industrial.

This scholarly work presents an indispensable platform from which the Victorian history buff and family genealogist can construct countless individual stories of hard graft, of hilarity, joy and sorrow.

Reading it, I am reminded of the words of a favourite Essex author – Dorothy L Sayers, who has her hero in The Nine Tailors reminding his colleague in the detection of crime : ‘At Southend you would call it ozone and pay a pound a sniff for it.’

Simon Coxall, FHE Committee Member and landscape archaeologist

We have copies of the book available for sale at a cost per copy of £16 including United Kingdom P&P from VCH Essex, c/o Essex Record, Wharf Road, Chelmsford, CM2 6YT

Cheques should be made payable to Victoria County History of Essex Trust.

Overseas purchasers please contact us for additional postage costs.

History through poetry at the ERO

On Tuesday 6th January members of the Victoria County History of Essex were very happy to be at the Essex Record Office to support a talk given by Professor Catherine Clarke, Director of the Centre for the History of People, Place and Community at the Institute of Historical Research, which is the home of the national Victoria County History Project.

Professor Clarke has recently published a very well-received book, A History of England in 25 Poems, which explores the history of England through 25 poems written between the eighth century and today. Her talk “Maldon, Saxons, Vikings” primarily focussed on the poem in her book with an Essex connection: The Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, which turns a disastrous defeat for Byrthnoth and his men in 991 into a heroic victory for English honour.

The audience were treated to some sections of the poem being read aloud in the original Old English as well as a wonderful explanation of the political undertones of the poem. Clarke argues that poems have the power to open a direct portal between us and moments in the past, and the experiences and emotions of those who lived in the past. On the evidence of this talk, she is the ideal guide to the time travelling potential of poetry and no doubt after this event Chelmsford book shops will have seen a surge in sales of her book!

An additional highlight was the presence of the Julie Miller, the curator of the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon, who had brought with her a tenth-century sword from the museum’s collection, which was found near Maldon. It was an amazing experience for attendees to handle an artefact that might have been used at the Battle of Maldon.

Professor Clarke with the tenth-century sword from the Combined Military Services Museum, Maldon

Thanks to Professor Clarke for coming to Essex and giving the VCH the opportunity to have a display and spread the word about our work and to the Essex Record Office for hosting the event.

Clacton volunteer group update

Clacton on the Tendring coast is home to one of our three volunteer groups. In this blog, chairman Roger Kennell introduces the group and their current project.

Detail from the *Map of the County of Essex* 1777 by John Chapman & Peter André

The volunteer members of the Group, founded as a collaboration with the VCH Essex in 2002, have met monthly ever since to research on a range of local history projects. It is a proud fact that the group have always produced positive outcomes from their research, disseminating findings through publications, exhibitions, site information boards or trail leaflets, and generally raising the awareness and understanding of local landscapes and history.

The Group’s current project is titled: ‘Great Clacton: its Church, Hall and Parks. The Legacy of the Bishops of London’

Great Clacton Hall in 1940. Photo credit, the late Kenneth Walker.

Our two-hour long meetings, which begin with a welcome tea of coffee, are held at Tendring Village Hall, and usually consist of a Power Point presentation on an aspect of the project followed by a discussion and planning as necessary.

These meetings can be flexible. At our October meeting the opportunity arose to welcome Neil Wiffen to provide his talk on ‘Towering Defences’, how a defence system against a Napoleonic invasion developed along the Essex and Suffolk shore.

The following month of November, we returned to our Great Clacton project. The Domesday Survey includes a single entry for Clachintuna, there then being no division into Great and Little Clacton. Listed is the following: ‘now 1 mill’. Hitherto, no location for this mill has been found, but during our session two probable places were identified, both being potential tide mill sites. One lay on the coast at Wash Lane with the Reed Land Pool, and the other, perhaps with more evidence including field names and track ways, being on the Holland River near Clacton Park.

Members of the Clacton VCH group about to enjoy a convivial Christmas lunch

At the December meeting, being a festive time and one for reflection, an illustrated glance back at some of our previous projects was enjoyed. This was especially helpful to some of our more recent members to highlight our range of research and record of positive project outcomes.

We are now underway with planning the New Year, 2026. January will see a meeting to examine and interpret the recent report on a resistivity survey of the churchyard of the parish church of Saint John. This report has the potential to increase our understanding of the manorial complex of the bishop’s of London, including their ‘stately house’.

A postcard from before 1914 showing the 12th century parish church of Saint John the Baptist, Great Clacton.

The Clacton VCH Group intends to provide a further blog update as our research continues.

Roger Kennell

Chairman, Clacton VCH Group

Exploring Essex History: Crime and Society

Trustee Ben Cowell, Director General of Historic Houses, has provided this report about our annual symposium, which took place at the Galleywood Heritage Centre on Saturday 4 October 2025.

The Essex VCH Trust was very grateful to all who joined in our 2025 study day, held at the Galleywood Heritage Centre on Saturday 4 October. Our theme for the day was ‘Crime and Society in Essex’, and we were treated to four exceptional talks covering a range of periods and perspectives.

Simon Coxall began proceedings with an intriguing talk on the ‘Curious Quest for Quamstowe’, exploring judicial execution in medieval Essex. The term ‘Quamstowe’ referred to the gallows that served as the sites of execution for many manors and parishes. Simon had located over fifty such sites across the county, meaning that they might have been shared between several townships or settlements. For this reason, they were often located on administrative boundaries (which explains why they were so often found on hilltops), as well as at the intersection of major highways (often former Roman roads). The most famous gallows site in English history was Tyburn, located beyond the outer edge of Westminster and the city of London and at the intersection of two important Roman roads (Watling Street, and the road that is now Oxford Street). More research was needed to excavate more of the history of gallows sites in Essex, now entirely lost to posterity but nonetheless surviving as traces in field names and on maps.

Next, Alison Rowlands (University of Essex) treated us to a bravura account of the witchcraft trials in Essex of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Her principal focus was the surge in witchcraft convictions of the 1570s and 1580s, a prelude to the more famous spike in prosecutions that occurred in the 1640s thanks to Matthew Hopkins. Alison directed her attention away from Hopkins and towards the 16^th-century convictions, asking why they grew in such number at this time. Answers were variously associated with factors such as harvest failures, misogyny, and the propensity of puritan elements to be especially damning of those believed to be acting in association with the devil and his familiars. Some men were convicted of ‘magic murders’, but witchcraft was predominantly a charge levelled at women, often those who were older and living alone. Essex was noticeable for the volume of its witchcraft convictions, and Alison convinced the room that much more historical research was needed on this most fascinating (as well as disturbing) of topics in English social history.

A full house at the Galleywood Heritage Centre

The conversation shifted another gear with our next speaker, John Walter (Professor Emeritus, University of Essex). John gave a masterful account of the moral economy of food protests, using examples from Essex in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Claims of the ‘people’ often paralleled the viewpoint of the government, at least when it came to attitudes towards ‘Dunkirkers’ and other elements in the political economy of grain. The law did not recognise assemblies of women protesting against food prices as criminal, which gave legal cover for women in Maldon in 1629 to invade a ship sitting in the quay with a cargo of grain, bound for the continent. By demanding for their bonnets and the folds in their skirts to be filled with grain, these women were participating in a choreographed expression of moral attitudes towards the free market. They did not regard themselves necessarily as protestors, so much as providing a corrective to the worst excesses of capitalism at times of extreme hunger. Nevertheless their leader, ‘Captain’ Ann Carter, was eventually hung for inciting riotous behaviour.

The old county gaol in Moulsham (demolished in 1859)

Finally, Jane Pearson (University of Essex) gave us an excellent overview of the workings of crime and punishment in Essex in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries. Using the example of a set of travelling performers and quack doctors (mountebanks) in Epping in 1791, she invited us to speculate on the criminality or otherwise of these sorts of gatherings. The crime at stake here was not necessarily that of performing without a licence, so much as of running a lottery (open-air gambling games). Several of the protagonists ended up spending time in Chelmsford goal. This itself was an indication of changing attitudes towards crime, with incarceration reinvented in the 19^th century as first and foremost a means of punishment. Although prisons at this time were not pleasant places, it at least meant that judges were making less recourse to the gallows – which had by now ceased to be the ubiquitous features in the landscape that Simon Coxall had described earlier in the day.

The four talks sat well together, and several themes emerged. One was the exceptionalism of Essex when it came to particular crimes, such as claims of witchcraft or some types of food riot. Another theme was the role of women, both as the victims of crime but also as agents of protest and extra-judicial action. We extend our thanks to all our speakers, as well as to our audience for their intriguing questions and comments throughout the day.

Interwar Harwich – new draft history available!

To mark the upload of a draft chapter on Harwich 1919-1939, VCH Essex researcher Dr Andrew Senter has written a post about the growth of motor traffic, and attempts to accommodate it, as Harwich and Dovercourt went through a period of considerable modernisation between the wars.

The increased use of the roads by private motor vehicles was notable from the early 1920s and accordingly the police were required to attend to traffic offences mainly involving speeding. In 1920 Harwich Borough Council resolved to apply for an order to restrict the speed limit for charabancs and ‘heavy’ motor cars to six miles per hour at a time when the national speed limit was 20 mph. An especially dangerous section of road was the junction of Garland Road and Parkeston Main Road (officially renamed Station Road in 1931) in Parkeston, which was the responsibility of Essex County Council. A sign had to be erected, probably in the mid 1920s, but this did not appear to deter speeding. The borough’s first road census was conducted in 1925 as the council became concerned about the volume of traffic. Various road-widening programmes were carried out at around this time especially along Main Road in Dovercourt.

The transition from horse-drawn vehicles to mainly motorised transport was evident among commercial and public service vehicles. For example, the local Co-operative Society bought several vans and lorries in the interwar period including in 1931 a lorry to replace the horses previously used on its coal rounds. From 1921 refuse collection in Harwich borough was carried out by an electric vehicle which replaced the horses and carts. The local fire brigade bought a new motorised fire engine in 1925 leading to the selling of the horses and equipment used with the previous steam engine. The council had use of the British Red Cross Society motor ambulance based in Dovercourt in the interwar period; in 1932 it granted £100 to the society towards the cost of a new one. The council’s own horse-drawn ambulance was only finally destroyed in 1938.

The provision of public transport increased greatly in this period. The first buses commenced running to and from Colchester in 1921. Other local services were provided by charabancs, motor buses, taxis known as hackney carriages and still in 1924 three horse-drawn vehicles. In 1927 the Silver Queen Motor Omnibus Co. was granted a monopoly on local bus services and the National Omnibus & Transport Co. Ltd (both companies were subsequently absorbed into the Eastern National Omnibus Co. Ltd) was licensed to extend the Colchester-Harwich service to all year round. Dovercourt’s longest-established business, now known as Starlings Taxis, was started by Robert H. Starling by 1877 and continued by his son George E. Starling. In the 1920s they ran charabancs and taxis, with the company becoming G. E. Starling and Sons after 1928 when George’s sons Robert and Oliver continued the business.

The 1930s saw much wider areas covered by public transport: in 1930 George Ewer & Co. Ltd inaugurated a bus service between London and Harwich. Dovercourt’s role as a seaside resort led to greatly increased advertising. The publicity van belonging to the local MP, John Pybus, toured the eastern region in both 1930 and 1931. The tour appears to have been successful as bus excursions ran from Wickham Market two years later. Attracting visitors from the Midlands was later adopted as a policy by the council resulting in Allenways Ltd, of Birmingham running a coach service to Harwich, Dovercourt and Parkeston in 1937. In the same year licences were also granted to the Eastern National Omnibus Co. Ltd by the Traffic Commissioners for the Eastern Area to run two new coach services from Bedford and Luton to Dovercourt.

A free public car park was opened in late 1937 in Station Road, Dovercourt, apparently on land that had been purchased by the council in late 1935 or early 1936. Dovercourt became increasingly congested by the mid 1930s. Traffic lights were installed at the junction of High Street and Kingsway in 1937. Increased road traffic in general can be seen in the census carried out during the holiday season in August 1938. In a one-week period 35,345 vehicles passed along Main Road at All Saints’ church, Upper Dovercourt, representing a significant increase on the 1935 figure (31,143).

The trust makes drafts available to share research in advance of publication. Comments on draft histories are welcome, so feel free to get in touch via our contact form!

Annual Symposium programme

Join us for an exciting in-person afternoon event on Saturday 4th October at the Galleywood Heritage Centre, exploring research about crime and society in Anglo-Saxon, early-modern and eighteenth-century Essex. There will be a series of four fascinating talks with a mid-afternoon break for tea and cake (included in the £15 ticket price), a booksale and raffle.

To book tickets please click this link to visit our Eventbrite booking page!

2025-08-06 – VCH Essex event flyer Download