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Harwich is a town in Essex, England, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the northeast, Ipswich to the northwest and Colchester to the southwest. The town received its charter in 1238, although there is evidence of earlier settlement - for example, a record of a chapel in 1177, and some indications of a possible Roman presence.

Its position on the estuaries of the Stour and Orwell rivers and its usefulness to mariners as the only safe anchorage between the Thames and Humber led to a long period of maritime significance, both civil and military. The town became a naval base in 1657 and was heavily fortified, with Harwich Redoubt, Beacon Hill Battery, and Bath Side Battery.

The Royal Navy is no longer present in Harwich but adjacent Parkeston continues to offer a regular ferry service to Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands. Many operations of the large container port at Felixstowe and of Trinity House, the lighthouse authority, are managed from Harwich, and plans for the development of a new container port in Bathside Bay were approved by the British government in December 2005.

The town's coastal position, however, made it vulnerable to the North Sea Flood of 1953.

Harwich today is contiguous with Dovercourt and the two along with Parkeston are often referred to collectively as Harwich.

Harwich was the home town of Christopher Jones, the master and quarter-owner of the Mayflower, and was also a base for that ship. The famous diarist Samuel Pepys was MP for Harwich.

Architecture

Despite, or perhaps because of, its small size Harwich is highly-regarded in terms of architectural heritage, and the whole of the older part of the town, excluding Navyard Wharf, is a conservation area.

The regular street plan, with principal thoroughfares connected by numerous small alleys, betrays the town’s medieval origins although many buildings of this period are hidden behind 18th century facades.

The extant medieval structures are largely private homes. Notable public buildings, all later, include the parish church of St. Nicholas (1821) in a restrained Gothic style, with many original furnishings including a (somewhat altered) organ of the same date in the west end gallery, and the Guildhall of 1769, the only Grade I listed building in Harwich.

On the quayside may be seen the Pier Hotel of 1860 and Great Eastern Hotel of 1864 (the latter now divided into apartments), both reflecting the town’s new importance to travelers following the arrival of the railway line from Colchester in 1854.

Also of interest are the High Lighthouse (1818); the unusual Treadwheel Crane (late 17th century); the Electric Palace Cinema (1911), one of the oldest purpose-built cinemas to survive complete with its original projection room and ornamental frontage still intact and operational; the Old Custom Houses on West Street; and a number of Victorian shopfronts. There is little notable building from the later parts of the 20th century, but major recent additions include the lifeboat station and two new structures for Trinity House; that organisation's office building, next door to the Old Custom Houses, was completed in 2005. All three additions are influenced by the high-tech style.

References

• Pevsner, Nikolaus and Radcliffe, Enid (2002). The Buildings of England: Essex. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09601-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

• Smith Stuart Reynolds (consultants); et al. (2006). “Tendring District Council Conservation Area Review: Harwich Conservation Area”. Tendring District Council. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); External link in |title= (help)

External links

• Map sources for Harwich
• Electric Palace
• Harwich Town Council
• The Harwich Society
• Harwich Tourist Information Centre
• Harwich - White's Directory of Essex, 1848

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• Towns in Essex
• Ports and harbours of Essex