Camping in Essex

We had three days (2 nights) camping in Essex. Brilliant weather, a very pretty part of England and a couple of small pilgrimages to make. We knew (see earlier postings) we had to check on sites before leaving home, as the ones signed on the road or in the roadmap are so depressing you'd never venture anywhere if that was your only choice.
We did in fact look at quite a few of these along the way, in case they were miraculously alright, but I can report that they are not. Someone somewhere thinks that lots of long lines of plastic boxes up on breeze-blocks, with a cheapo bar and the smell of chips wafting over, makes for a decent place to relax. It does not. Even with a spectacular view and a peaceful area, this kind of setup is poor, intrusive, insulting, hostile, ugly, and mercenary. How come the owners and the planners think this is OK? What on earth do people do in these places? How come the French and the Germans and the Italians and the Americans can get these places to look ok, and offer basic decent civilised conditions and services to their customers, and we cannot? Why does anyone stand for this?
Anyway, through diligent researches on the net (thanks mainly to the Camping and Caravanning Club) we had a list of alternatives with us... no electricity needed, but we did need a WC on site. We wanted somewhere quiet and with something going for it.... and at last we found it, as I will explain later.
Meanwhile we drove through the amazing lanes and byways of that part of Essex between the River Crouch and the Blackwater. It is a low-lying marshy peninsular, little populated but with pretty towns and villages along the way. It is not all that different from tracts of Kent where we live, but on a bigger scale, and clearly people have more money to spend in Essex than in the Jutish peninsular.
As a result, the houses are mostly done up to the nines - with railings, gates, walls, twiddles, paint, gold trim, lions, driveways, security systems, new windows, pargetting, topiary, extensions and more. Another very noticeable difference is that barns and stables and sheds belonging to old farms are not, in the main, converted to houses, so each establishment still has its appurtenances and supporting outbuildings and very handsome that is to see. In Kent, sadly, the pressure of space and money has allowed most of these lower buildings to be made into separate households, which almost always looks squashed and awkward, and is a diminishment for the main house.
But it has to be said - there is something very funny about the degree of upkeep of the Essex houses - as if the owners expected to be on telly any day now and are in readiness. They really do go in for every kind of aggrandizing embellishment, of which the gold-topped but still rather spindly railings are the silliest.
The message everyone seems to want to send is that the owners of these houses are rich, and have a lot of money, and a lot of stuff to protect and keep secure, and therefore they need all these railings and electronic gates, and even if they can't really afford much stuff inside they will make sure the outside looks as if they can.
My word, the houses are very very smart and grand. Indeed. If I were setting up as a builder, I would go and do it in Essex. I cannot imagine where all the money has come from, but I kept having images of the WAGs (wives and girlfriends of footballers) all keeping up with each other. This is not a modern phenomenon, either. As we went to the furthest outflings of the area, the number of tiny, poor, single-storey shacks and originally humble dwellings increased, even though they were mostly very 'done up'. I imagine that for a hundred years or more, enterprising youngsters made their way away from the rural poverty of their homes to London, and sent money back when they could. The nearer they were to London, the more money flowed into these old villages - and commensurately, the further from London or transport, the poorer these old communities remained. There are very few similar buildings in North Kent that I know of - I think they were cleared away long ago. It would be interesting to know more about this aspect of social history. But the architectural heritage of Essex is bold and distinct and clearly people love their houses. It is wrong of me to mock.
We had lunch in Burnham-on-Crouch, in bright sun. Fish and chips in a shed on the quay.
So - we made our way with some difficulty out to Bradwell, where there is an ancient old nuclear power station nearby. The difficulty getting there arose from the fact that a stretch of road leading to the village across the marsh farmland is apparently in private hands and closed off, without any warning, and necessitating a 15 mile detour. Silly.
The nuclear power station was not our destination. We were heading for an even more ancient powerhouse - St Peter's Chapel, out on the sea wall. This is an amazing place, one of the oldest churches in the land. It doesn't have a complicated history, but writing it down makes me almost quake to think of how long it's been there, and how things have swung around - how quickly great civilisations come and go, and how they can leave so little behind.
First we have the Romans gloomily deciding they need to defend Britannia from the menace of the Saxons - so as everyone knows they built a chain of fortresses round the south east coast - the forts of the Saxon Shore. The one they built here on this marshy spit of land may have been the one called Othona, but the name is not 100% certain. Anyway, it is described as being typically late 3rd century in style. Some of its outlines are still detectable but a large part has washed into the sea.
Roll on a couple of hundred years... The Roman history has faded away and we have Saxon England, divided into Kingdoms, and what is now Essex (East Saxons) had King Sigbert in charge who wanted to make his people Christian. He asked the Celtic Christian community at Lindisfarne right up the coast for help. They sent a missionary, an unusual man from what must have been an unusual family. He was one of 4 brothers and not only did he become a bishop and (later) a saint, but so did one of his bros - the famous St Chad. They had been part of a set of 12 Saxon lads taken on by the Celtic monks to help spread the word of God, and he was able to speak not only English but also Latin and Irish.
Cedd arrived in Essex in 653, and one year later was building this chapel right in the gateway of the ruined Roman fort - you can still see the Roman terracotta in the walls. His first church was probably made of wood but once Cedd had seen how stone could be used, he set to work, creating this tall, dark, stately and simple structure. Unusually, its diagonal measurements are identical to the inch, which is difficult to achieve and very rare, showing that he (or his chief mason) really did know what he was doing. A few tantalising fragment-details of the earliest period remain, such as a tiny piece of painted plaster, as well of course as the overall shape which is elegant and plain and very straight. There must have been a veritable village of buildings and activities round the Chapel - for the men and women who came to work there including a hospital, library, a hospital, a library, a school, an arts centre, a farm, a guest house and a mission base. From there Cedd established other Christian centres at Mersea, Tilbury, Prittlewell and Upminster. Another example is Southminster which is now a town of considerable size - much bigger than the deserted area around St Peter's. The church at Southminster (St Leonards), by the way, is a truly hilarious hodgepodge of building styles and materials, and well worth a visit. In 654 Cedd was also consecrated Bishop of Essex, but ten years later he died of plague while visiting another of his new Christian communities, at Lastingham in Yorkshire. 30 of his monks from Bradwell went to see him when they heard he was dying, and all but one caught the plague and died too. The only one to get back to Essex was a young boy. St Peter's Chapel was taken into the diocese of London and became a minster for the surrounding countryside.
No records remain from the time of the Vikings and the Danes but standing where it is, it must have suffered heavily. You can only imagine the terror, the violence, the fire, blood, book-burning and destruction. The whole site is so vulnerable.
More time passed.
The Normans arrived as conquerors, took the Chapel on, and it fell under the rule of St Valery on the Somme - a very similar landscape, as it happens.
Still it was standing there, tall and plain, out on the sea wall, and approached by the old Roman road.....all through the middle ages, through the years of plague and war, and eventually being sold into private hands and falling out of ecclesiastical use. It was used as a barn, and great holes were knocked into its sides, for entrances. By the nineteenth century it could barely have been recognisable as a church, as it was housing cattle and grain. But, of course, someone came along to love it and after extensive restoration and study, we have it today as a particularly lovely old place. The great thing is, you can definitely get a feel for what early stone churches must have been like all over the country, before denominations and dogma got in the way.
The view north from there, over the Blackwater estuary, is absolutely terrific, by the way, but the view out to sea is now ornamented (or disfigured depending on how you see these things) by windfarms etc.
We were inspired to try to get a camp-place overlooking the Blackwater, but all suitable fields are occupied by concentration-camp style Holiday Parks, and they are too dispiriting to describe any further.
We tootled on, and stopped en route at the lovely and ancient port of Maldon, where there are a lot of sailing barges such as we have at Faversham and where the very old church of St Mary's down by the quayside has lovely modern stained glass windows. One is dedicated to lads who fell during World War I, and it is a truly beautiful piece of work.
The town's parish church on the other hand, at the top of the hill, has a very curious triangular spire and the vicar who we met told us he was recently widowed and about to retire when he will move out of his astonishing Grade I listed black-and-white medieval vicarage into a council house in Suffolk. It made me think of how Cedd had faced changes in his life, too. Maldon, of course, is where they produce sea salt though we could not find any for sale in the town. And it is apparently the place where the first Tesco supermarket was built. Maybe there is a connection between these two facts.
The sun was lighting all the land with brilliant gold and we went on our way, looking for our pitch for the night. We headed inland and eventually, after some more looking, settled at a privately-owned field at Retreat Farm at Little Baddow, in the gentle and glorious valley of the Chelmer-Blackwater Navigation. That waterway is one of the gems of England and everyone should go and see it.
Built in 1790 to assist trade in and out of Chelmsford from Maldon, the Navigation offers ten miles or so of clean, clear, swiftly-flowing water, and a lock every mile. There is a well-kept old towpath, perfect for biking or riding, or push chairs, come to that. Great willows, ashes and poplars line the banks, the fields beside the water are managed as old-fashioned meadows, the birds sing their hearts out, the fish dart through the water, and all is well with the world. Paper Mill Lock offers tea and scones and boats for hire. It is truly gorgeous. The campsite was more or less perfect. We had a delicate thoroughbred horse nibbling the grass in his paddock just outside our tent, and walks and quietude and simple decent loos and showers, and the sight of hot-air balloons on the horizon. St Cedd would have been astonished to see them, and we in our own way were astonished too.... that these places DO exist, if you can find them.