Thursday, 5 May, 2022
May was a month for travel. Some of this was because British Rail had a big ticket sale, 50% off for a million tickets. This, plus our 30% rail discount, made travelling very tempting. We had two stays away – Norwich, and coming up soon, Nottingham, and one day trip to Colchester.
I’m not keen on day trips since my knee has been so painful. The overnight trips have lots of rest and relaxation built into them, but when you have a day trip you have nowhere to go to rest comfortably. However, with a bit of planning and a lot of cooperation, it can be done.
The truth is that I’d not thought much about Colchester. From time to time I’d read about it, that was the UK’s oldest town and that it was a market town. During the pandemic, a local cake shop Victoria Yum moved there. The owner, Kiersten, put Instagram posts up regularly. So I had a plan to go to Colchester, check it out and go say hi to Kiersten. We’d tried to go there as a stop after Norwich – it’s on the same line – but the fare was too high. The sale made it much more reasonable.
I did a bit of research on interesting things to do and we set off for our train. It’s about 45-50 minutes to Colchester from Stratford. It seemed to go quickly.
When you get to Colchester by train, you aren’t actually in the town of Colchester. That’s reached by another train that makes an 8-minute journey to Colchester Town. Luckily our ticket got us all the way there. It felt funny to be on the Norwich train again.
Colchester looked small and quiet and we started to walk. We found one of our places of interest right away. It was just behind the station, St Botolph’s Priory. It was founded between 1093 and 1100. In the Colchester siege of 1648 the early Norman church was largely destroyed by cannon fire and has never been repaired. The church had been built of flint rubble with arches and dressings in brick, mostly reused from Roman buildings at nearby Colchester. This was a lovely ruin. We sat and admired it for a while.
We left the priory and headed into the centre of town. Although Colchester lacked much in the way of energy or urbanity, it was visually interesting a lot of the time and I took many photos. It’s already hard to decide which ones to use and I’ve only just started.
Colchester has the accustomed lanes all leading to a more modern shopping area. We wanted to get the lay of the land, see what we were in for in terms of architecture and scope, and of course where to eat. Krish had booked a place already but we then decided it was better for dinner. After a heavy lunch, who wanted to walk around so much?
The lanes were full of small cafes and shops. We poked around a bit before looking for our lunch choice of restaurants.
We somehow hit Red Lion Yard, where Kiersten has her shop, without trying. And a lovely yard it is too! Festooned with union jacks and the site of the fantastic old Red Lion Inn. It felt festive and very English. I popped in to say hello to Kiersten and we had a glimpse of the inside of the inn as we walked by towards the high street.
Colchester’s main high street has a grand building. the Town Hall. Very impressive! We continued along, then back into the lanes area looking for a place called Timbers.
Timbers sounded like it would be a nice old Tudor style pub, but instead was a café. My assumptions led me to walk by it a few times. Perhaps I should have kept walking, but such is life when you care what you eat! Krish decided he would get a breakfast and I’m not keen so ordered my own thing, the daily suet pudding (steak and mushroom) and it arrived as an enormous plate in front of me. Right then! You won’t be surprised to hear that I ate almost half of it. ) It was the same for Krish, whose breakfast was aptly named Mega. Did I mention we didn’t want anything heavy? )
If we’d been at home, a nap would be in order even though we hadn’t eaten even one whole lunch between us. However, we had about six hours to go, so we walked on.
We found our next two targets quite easily and accidentally. The first was the Jumbo Water Tower. It’s very hard to miss! It was completed in 1883 and was nicknamed ’Jumbo’ after the London Zoo elephant as a term of derision in 1882 by Reverend John Irvine who was annoyed that the tower dwarfed his nearby rectory. Jumbo or not, it’s a brutalist and ugly thing in an otherwise pretty little area where we also saw a Quaker Friends’ House doubling as a polling station. It was local voting day in the UK.
The water tower was right at our next target, the Balkerne Gate. It is the largest surviving gateway in Roman Britain, dating from the second century. It’s a very impressive structure with the lines of red brick running through the stone wall that we got used to seeing in Torino.
Next to the gate is a big white pub, The Hole in the Wall, with some of the Roman gate showing under its foundation, where they had simply built on top.
Beyond the gate, is a highway and beyond that a large residential area so it was time to turn back and track down the final area we’d planned to check out, the Dutch Quarter.
The Dutch Quarter proved to be a fantastic area not far from the station and tucked back behind the station road and high street. It’s quite a large area too. We spent a lot of time here. It was the 16th century home to Flemish Protestant refugees fleeing religious persecution after their rebellion against Catholic Spain failed. Before the Dutch arrived, these houses were inhabited by Jews and other immigrants. I’d say that, although it’s very quiet now, it must have been much noisier and neighbourly during those decades. I suppose this is true of many immigrant areas, once buzzing with life and daily routines and customs, only to become today’s trendy and expensive place to live after regeneration.
At any rate, the buildings are all incredible, and well -preserved and, were it not for the cars, would look chocolate-box pretty sometimes and certainly frozen in time.
When we walked up the hill, the back of the town hall came into view. I was surprised to see how close we were to the high street. Just before we reached the town hall, though, we saw a really interesting old building. 
Although it looked much older, this was the Old Library, which was built in 1894. It was at any rate a very ornate and majestic building and I’m pleased we stumbled on it.
We had another glimpse of the Red Lion Inn and I was getting tired so I went to sit in Victoria Yum while Krish looked around. I bought a tart to eat but could finish only half of it, so put it in a box with a slice of cocolate hazelnut cake for when we got home. The café was closing a half hour early because it was so quiet – I felt for Kiersten who when I said goodbye, called out See you on Instagram. I hope the place survives. From what she says, weekends are busy, but it’s very quiet during the week.
I’m not quite sure how it happened but somehow we found ourselves outside the gates of Castle Park. We are not park lovers, but we had time so we walked through. Krish had heard that there was a toy museum in here so perhaps we would find it still open. It was 4:30pm and Colchester, like most small places, was mostly closed up by 4. And surprise there were some cool things in the park – another part of the wall, and a giant redwood.
I’d reached that part of the day when, despite all the little breaks, I was done. I had another break while Krish went ahead to find the museum. He came back to tell me that it was open if I wanted to come in. We did an absolute whirlwind tour and I’d also reached the point where even one more photo seemed too much, but the day was marching on and so were we, tired but somehow squeezing out a little bit more.
We thought about dinner and going to our original choice of The Old Siege House Bar & Brasserie but didn’t have it in us. I had at least been curious about the siege, which is mentioned all over the place in Colchester. We had even sat for a while in the Dutch quarter beside a plaque that I had time to read. From the seat where I was resting, in front of me were the old houses and behind me to the left was a little parkette with the plaque sat, and leading to a much more modern housing estate. As usual, I thought about contrasts. The contrast of the old and the new, the nouveau riche and the ordinary person, and the present peace of the area and its bloody past.
Who was John Ball and why did he have a plaque? John Ball was an English priest and one of the leaders of the Peasants Revolt of 1381 and one of the most eloquent representatives of the Peasants Revolt. He was first arrested in Colchester in 1366 for heretical preaching and forbidden from preaching, but was not deterred. He attacked the wealth of the church and preached for equality between social classes. In 1376 he was arrested for preaching that people need not pay their tithes to unworthy priests. Even more inflammatory he said that all property should be shared in common among all people. Ball gave a sermon at Blackheath saying “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” The peasants were so inflamed by his words that they demanded the heads of King Richard II’s bad advisors— Richard returned to the Tower with the men who the commons wanted to kill and the next day the commons rampaged through London. Ball went into hiding but was found in Coventry and was hanged, drawn and quartered on July 15 1381 at St Albans, his head ending up on a spike on London Bridge. Spiked head or not, I think I like this John Ball. He deserves his place in Colchester.
I had thought John Ball was connected to the ‘Old Siege,’ but apparently he predates it. I’ve finally had time to check out the siege and I suppose you could easily go to Colchester and focus on this. The long and bloody history with Colchester at its centre spans from AD60 to 1648, and I’ll put what I found at the end (in its bitty and disorganised state) for those who don’t want to suffer through it right now.
What happened next was a long rest outside Firstsite, an art gallery and cultural centre. We considered dinner again and dismissed it, and this happened right up until we left.
We walked down to the station and sat again for a while at St Botolph’s Priory. We checked out the fast food places along the way and decided against them. I bought a bottle of water in an ‘Oriental supermarket’ and then a strange-tasting Oreo Milkshake from a bubble tea place. I ate some of my emergency cashews as we waited on the station platform. At Colchester North, as they call the main station, the train was delayed but as always it arrived, and we set off making a good connection at Stratford and again for the bus for our front door. And Colchester is ticked off the list, an interesting and eye-catching town.
And now some history (borrowed heavily from the internet):
The slaughter at Camulodunum
Colchester was called by its Roman name of Camulodunum and was no different to any other Roman occupied town. The indigenous peoples were taxed to pay for their own servitude and the occupation was universally despised. At the same time there was famine, yet taxes were demanded in grain, deepening the resentment. Young men were being conscripted into the Roman army to fight and die for those they hated, and their land was being seized by Roman citizens, taking away their homes and the farms they had worked on for years.
Things came to a head when Camulodunum saw the construction of the Temple of Claudius that honoured the very Roman Emperor who had enforced their subjugation.
In AD60 Queen Boudica’s chose Camulodunum as the first target for retribution not by accident, but because it exemplified the quintessential Roman rule in Britain at the time. Boudica and her army slaughtered everyone. The streets ran with blood. Is this story true? It’s unclear. Only a few bones have ever been found that support it.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Boudica-and-the-Slaughter-at-Colchester/
The Siege of Colchester
As for the Siege, I found it hard to wrap my (non History and dates) head around it but it happened during the English Civil War of 1642 – 1651 and was the longest siege in British history.
It was during a relative lull in 1648 that Royalist supporters arrived in Colchester and occupied it. The Parliamentarian army pursued them and after losing an initial battle, laid siege to the town with the Royalists trapped inside.
The siege of Colchester, 1648, began when George Goring Earl of Norwich was driven into the town after he and Sir William Waller had unsuccessfully attempted to stage a Royalist rebellion in Kent and Essex. The Parliamentary commander, Lord Fairfax, invested the town on 14 June, and the Royalists surrendered on 22 August. The siege had a huge impact on the town of Colchester and its residents. It is thought that during the siege as many as 200 houses were destroyed and many others suffered significant damage.
https://colchesterheritage.co.uk/the-civil-war
A small town, the UK’s first, but loaded with huge events. Armed with all this knowledge beforehand, you could follow the historic trail and be quite invested in it for days. That’s not how I travel, but it’s a lesson for my next visit, Nottingham.
And finally, a little bit about Humpty Dumpty. Yes!
Humpty Dumpty was not a person at all, but a massive siege cannon that was used by Royalist forces (the king’s men) during the English Civil War that raged between 1642 and 1651. During the siege of Colchester in 1648, the Royalists hauled Humpty Dumpty to the top of the church tower of St Mary-at-the-Walls, and for eleven weeks Humpty (sat on the wall and) blasted away at the attacking Parliamentarian Roundhead troops, defending the town.
Humpty’s great fall came when the church tower was eventually blown up by the Roundheads, and he couldn’t be put together again as he had fallen into, and subsequently had become buried, deep in the surrounding marshland. Without the mighty Humpty Dumpty to defend them, the king’s men led by Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were soon overrun by the Parliamentarian soldiers of Thomas Fairfax.
You’re welcome!