There was Essex Day last week, I patched together a mix of stories and mentions about the county where I was born and gained so much. In my hometown the editor of the weekly ‘Burnham on Crouch & Dengie Hundred Advertiser’ newspaper started my journey to being a writer, asking me to tell about pedalling into the countryside: Oh, give the dog a bone! It was a door so easy to push on.
Essex Day, by the way, October 26. Next up in 2025! Get along to Bradwell on Sea before then though – catch yourself some time beingThere to visit the Chapel that is really Essex, St Peter’s on the Wall
The county has islands set beyond salty causeways amongst many of its sea-side honeypots, there is ancient and the quirky, it has a way of its own aplenty yet let’s not venture there but more towards its people. Bill Leach, bicycle builder; Robert Saunders tent maker; James Booth, metal man; Ebenezer Dilliway, printer; Bob Cole, boatbuilder: they are just some of those making things. Similarly James Robinson, electrical engineer, a father of two girls. I’ll pick up on his contribution in a bit, seeing a part he played in the story of Essex is not about manufacturing things, it’s about making things work and caring for others.
As the place, Essex sits at the hearth of Britain’s heritage, yes hearth, and here was played a prelude to Whiby Synod. A saint, one of four Northumbrian brothers, arrive in what is now Essex a tad after the Romans departed. When living local they’d worked their own wine growing place and in spare time had finished off a road or two and built a fortress. They set oyster beds as well, probably cast a lot of seeds that came a good grain for their spelt bread loaves too.
You have to wonder if the man arriving from up north had ever witnessed such lifestyle as the Romans enjoyed on the Dengie peninsula before they upped and left. Still, by the time St Cedd would head back homewards to be ordained Bishop of Essex, he had built places such as Prittlewell, probably, yet certainly had established a south minster and also a west minster, also building the St Peter’s Chapel on the Wall of the former Roman guard point at the esturary of the Blackwater. This is the bit of Essex where I come from, one river down the east coast hence the tag ‘Burnham Boy” on the top of the peninsula different things tend to have happened.
To Bradwell, once not on Sea but juxta Mare … ! …came the fusion that brought light and enlightenment too, a new clear approach to energy provision, well in a way. Still, we are proud of the place that tried FIDO, did quite hot work getting there too. Shipwrights put wonderful gaff rigged oyster smacks into the waterways, on the leisure and fun side the craftsmen forged a yachting reputation for repeated Olympic Gold medal winning. Essex county has done well in cycling circles too, at Burnham the Crouch CC, founded in 1953, the Club was envied around the country for having its very own Clubhouse in Station Road, all thanks to Mr Maurice George. It got form from furious rates of pedalling too.
From the other side of Essex Vin Denson raced bicycles like he meant it! His was the first win by a Brit in the Giro d’Italia, him first from this country to ride in the Tour de France. In more recent times Alex Dowsett, who began his racing years at Maldon and District CC, did a Tour de France stint, he won two Stages at the Giro. It was his speed along the Steeple road on training in the pursuit of a faster time trial protocol that’s said to have scorched much roadside verge grass. His Club record there took 4m.53s out of my 1954 “10” ride I had imagined was quick seeing I’d got inside 24 minutes. Then spent five more laying on the grass of an Althorn lane verge that only got flattened, not burnt.
At about this time James Robinson was on the throttle whenever he took his motorcycle and sidecar up the road, it was his personal transport for getting to meetings after a day at work. He’d do a forty years stint of that, doing things in his own-time for the Trades’ Union people who’s work was mainly close to the River Thames, Dockland and such places. There also was the quite unknown-about by family, tin hat task that was revealed to them by a mourner at his funeral: James Robinson was called in to disarme the odd fused mine or two that had floated into the county one way or the other. By parachute or on the tide. These things had the capacity to blow up in your face. The oldtime ARP Warden said at the Wake, we’d warn him to “take care Jim” and truth is that as nothing bad or untoward happened then a job had got done soon as said, didn’t it. This story couldn’t be told of it hadn’t!
Then there was another number the Grays Thurrock man did, his putting some whatever it needed to help turn ideas into stories that got printed, read, digested, in the UK and around the globe. He did that by founding a publishing operation with his daughter, one that would work across a community. It was his style of course, doing deeds to help with put words, presence, caring, kindnesses, endeavouring and effort to join and cement hopes and aims, things which sometimes will develop quite beyond anticipation.
James Robinson gained a Gold Medal for his forty years of Services to the Trades’ Union movement and his local Essex Branch. As a celebration he took his daughter Kathleen to a London TUC Congress dinner, there quite to her amazement she got to dance with Vic Feather. “It was an incredible evening, my first ever time at such an important dinner dance occasion” At the time Kathleen was a teenager, quite without any inkling of things ahead. It was some years later she’d adopt her mother’s maiden name to put in the byline of her writing magazine articles and books about taking children into the countryside. She began with relating stories of hiking and camping in the outdoors, nights in the tent, cooking and eating, it was the style that stayed. The name chosen: Kate Spencer.
It’s fair to say, didn’t the Essex Girl do good.
Prl.
