The calendar has been melting of late, time oozes in the summer heat. Lying very still watching cricket is the order of the day, activity is relegated to the margins, sunrise, sunset. There is frantic activity outside the window, hordes of people in a fearful rush to enjoy themselves, exposing as much skin to cancerous rays as possible, unaware a breeze they are un-used too means they are blistering faster than expected.
A number of coastal walks have been cancelled, just too much like hard work navigating the colonies of basking fatties. If they do stir, it is to tell me some rule they imagine is in place regarding the tethering or banishment of dogs. I ignore them once, if they repeat themselves they wish I was able to ignore them twice, unpaid jobsworth’s with no training. It is not worth the strain, fatty will be gone soon, taking the sunburn, leaving his rubbish. The yobbish bores are not going to Spain this year, the familiar British export has stayed at home and we were not prepared for them.
All this and I became aware August was escaping me and there was a pilgrimage to do.
Colchester is a town of history, ruined history. Boadicea ransacked the place during Roman occupation, the English Civil War laid siege to it, even earthquake, the planners, developers and neglect have done the rest. So now the oldest recorded town in England is a succession of glimpsed remains in carparks. Dismal.
Initially the plan was to plot a route through Colchester and feast on some history, this was too sweeten my visit to the place which while not actually under duress was not my idea of a good time.
Crammed between two short stay car-parks and a small train station is a patch of green. Dotted about this little green lung are bins overflowing the empty dented cans of strong lager. A sub-contracted clean-up crew are leaning out of large vehicles nearby taking about whatever the lowest common denominator of television they had watched the night before.
Obviously I had more interest in this area than seeing a haunt of deadbeats or compare the prices of short-stay carparks. This is St Botolph’s Priory, or the remains of it. It stood just outside the Roman city walls, in what today can be considered town centre.
It has stood for nearly 1000 years, the first Augustinian Priory in England, founded at the end of the 11th century built on the land which once stood a Saxon church. Within the ruinous remains, in which a good deal of Roman brickwork was recycled, can be made out a little over a quarter circumference of a circular window. Apparently the first significant circular window in English history. There is a sketch of it still existing in 1718, together with considerably more of the ornate west wall.
Henry VIII looms large in English religious history and the priory was dissolved in 1536. It remained in use as the parish church but the Siege of Colchester in 1648 badly damaged the structure and it brought an end to its working life.
The Colchester earthquake of 1884 did considerable damage and probably accounts for most of the discrepancy between the 1718 sketch and what we see today.
Next to the ruins is the current church. A plaque on its side gives the date of build 1836, “having been without a church for nearly two hundred Years” its slightly accusatory message reads.
All the while a nervous youth was fiddling with the thin blue plastic supermarket bag, how he wanted to drag out the first super-strength brew of the day but there was still just enough left of him to not do so while I was there. It was 07.30, a bit early to start in on the beer but it would have reduced he knew it would reduce the shakes and make him feel a whole lot better.
I nearly made good on my promise of a walk through Colchester history but I had lost the drive, the morning rush was starting, noise was gathering, most people were drowning it out plugged into their ipods. My car was in a short-stay car-park, I was going to be unable to make the mental adjustment which would allow the history to speak to me.
It had waited 1,000 years, there is a lot to see, a lot of walking to do, timing a walk in townscapes is critical though.
There are more images of this and other things on my flickr photostream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40131473@N06/
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