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Between 1945 and 1961 a total of 6,147 public and private houses were built, so that by 1961, when the population was 65,080, there were 20,229 dwellings (of which 19,825 were occupied).
- Roman Colchester
- Saxon Colchester
- Colchester in The Middle Ages
- Colchester in The 16th Century
- Colchester in The 17th Century
- Colchester in The 18th Century
- Colchester in The 19th Century
- Colchester in The 20th Century
- Colchester in The 21st Century
Colchester started life as a centre of the local Celtic tribe, the Trinovantes. It was a group of settlements and farmland surrounded by a network of ditches. The site was about 12 square miles or 20 square kilometers. The Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD and they built a fort in a piece of high ground in this center about 44 AD. The fort was surrou...
Town life may have ended after the Romans left. Most of the buildings in the Roman town were of timber and would soon have decayed and fallen to pieces. A small number of Saxons may have lived within the walls of Colchester and farmed the land there but it ceased to function as a town. Nevertheless, the Saxons gave Colchester its name. They called ...
In the late 11th century the Normans built a castle in Colchester. It was probably begun around 1079 and was completed by 1100. The castle was built on the vaults of the old temple of Claudius. In 1216 some barons rebelled against King John and brought soldiers from France to help them. The French soldiers occupied Colchester castle. John’s men bes...
In 1538 Henry VIII closed the Abbey, the priory, and the friaries. His daughter Mary 1553-1558 tried to undo the religious changes of the first half of the century. During her reign, some 23 Protestants from Colchester and the surrounding area were martyred in the town. In 1565 Queen Elizabeth allowed refugees from Holland to come to Colchester, wh...
In 1635 Colchester was given a new charter and gained its first mayor. However, like other towns in the 16th century and 17th century Colchester suffered outbreaks of plague. There were severe outbreaks in 1603-4 and 1665-66. The latter outbreak may have killed half the population, (which was about 8,000). But each time Colchester soon recovered. T...
The Bluecoat School, a charity school for boys and girls, opened in 1710. It was called that because of the color of the school uniforms. Hollytrees, which is now a museum was built in 1718. Colchester gained its first theatre in 1764. The Minories, which is now an art gallery, was built in 1776. During the 18th century, the cloth trade in Colchest...
Essex County Hospital was built in 1818 and the Corn Exchange where grain could be bought and sold was built in 1820. St Botolph’s Church was built in 1837. The Garrison church was built in 1856. The Castle Museum began in 1860. In the 18th century, Colchester had night watchmen who patrolled the streets at night but the first modern police force i...
By the beginning of the 20th century, the population of Colchester had reached about 38,000, less than half its present size. Boot and shoemaking died out in the early 20th century but engineering continued to flourish. The first electric lights in Colchester were switched on in 1901 and from 1904 electric trams ran in the streets. Buses replaced t...
In the 21st century, Colchester continued to flourish. A Visual Arts Centre opened in 2011. In 2023 the population of Colchester was 192,000.
Mary's-at-the-Walls, in existence by the earlier 12th century, was presumably built as a private church of the bishop of London; early, possibly 9th-century, graves have been found south of its churchyard, and its parish like St. Peter's extended well beyond the walls.
Apr 22, 2021 · Colchester historian Andrew Phillips told me: “From 1880 to 1883, the first of the newly-built houses had mains water drawn from a spring at St Botolph’s Corner. “The council had bought a...
History of Colchester. Colchester is a historic former town [now city] located in Essex, England. It served as the first capital of the United Kingdom and is the oldest recorded town in Britain. It was raided by the Vikings during the 9th and 10th centuries.
Apr 29, 2021 · Around a century after the New Town Estate was built, in the late 1980s, it made new history when the roads in this area were the first in Colchester to have traffic-calming speed bumps and the...
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When were private houses built in Colchester?
Did Colchester Council build houses in the 1920s?
Where are Colchester's housing developments from the 1960s?
What makes Colchester's New Town estate unique?
Only in the late 18th and early 19th century was the built-up area extended westward by gentlemen's houses on large plots along Lexden Road, and south-eastwards by the erection of barracks in 1794 and 1800, which encouraged speculative house-building in Magdalen Street.
