NEW Town, named in contrast to the “old town” centred primarily inside and near the Roman Wall, is the only part of Colchester designed to accommodate “upper, middle and lower or working classes” - a dominant feature of the structure of class segregated life in Victorian Britain.
This comprises around 470 houses built from the 1880s on what had been fields behind older dwellings in Magdalen Street and Military Road (as far as Camp Church) and facing Wimpole Road.
Subsequent housing developments in Colchester throughout the 20th century and into the 21st do not have such a deliberate social mix and built-form characteristics in the variable size and design of the dwellings in the same community.
The New Town Estate is unique.
It brought the “classes” closer together.
Although the big and small houses were not immediate neighbours, they were near neighbours.
It also includes the only “cement” house in Colchester – lived in by architect James Goodey, who was responsible for the whole of the development of the estate, and the man who, with son-in-law Walter Cressall, was the architect for several Colchester schools, including what became Wilson Marriage School in Barrack Street and Canterbury Road School.
The New Town Estate is now a Conservation Area.
The best way to view it is to start at New Town Road, from Military Road.
Walking northwards, ignore the small 1980s development of council flats on your left.
Walk on and see how big the houses are – for the “upper classes”.
Look to your right down Gladstone Road and Winnock Road to see houses for the “middle classes”.
Admire the quality of the architecture and wonderful brickwork of Victorian builders.
Observe the high garden wall on the corner of Gladstone Road and elsewhere along New Town Road.
Sir Bob Russell
These concrete walls are not historic in the sense that Colchester’s Roman City Wall is, but the fact they have survived for 140 years is testimony to their durability and the pioneering zeal of James Goodey.
I do not know of any other concrete walls that are protected by planning legislation!
Just before Winnock Road, on either side, there are housing developments from the 1960s which architecturally are out of place.
Through the trees to the left, near the corner of Winnock Road, there is a large three-storey house.
This is the only house ever built in Colchester from a then new-type of building construction - cement.
It was James Goodey’s home. How many developers nowadays live on estates they build?
The New Town Estate – two words, not one as it sometimes gets spelt incorrectly – had paved streets with gas lights. Gas also lit the houses. No electricity in those days.
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 former privately-owned water company in 1880.
“The water was pumped to a small water tower, near the Military Road end of New Town Road, from where it was gravity fed to the first of the new houses ahead of the Jumbo water tower being built in 1883.”
The original 1880 plans for dwellings in Winnock Road (Source: Patrick Denney Collection)
Every house was connected to main sewers, although my understanding is that only around the dozen or so “upper class” houses had bathrooms and an indoor toilet.
Most of the 470 dwellings did not have a bathroom – and the toilet was outside!
Water was heated by a coal-fired “copper” built in the corner of the scullery (kitchen), with water ladled in to heat for washing clothes or for baths (in tin baths on the kitchen floor or in front of the living room open fire).
The water had to be ladled out of the copper.
The only form of heating in houses was coal fires.
All coal deliveries were by horse and cart.
Motorised vehicles did not exist when the New Town Estate was built.
It is believed that most of the houses were built by Everetts who were based in Barrack Street (next to the school).
New Town Lodge, the cement stone home of architect James Goodey
They had a brickworks off Land Lane, East Hill, where it is a near certainty the bricks for the New Town Estate were made. The same brickworks which produced the bricks for the Jumbo water tower.
It is suggested you walk a short distance to your left along Winnock Road to get a better view of Goodey’s house.
At the time it was built it had the grand name “New Town Lodge”, still visible on the pillars at the original entrance to the site (now blocked with a wall) which many years ago was converted into flats.
Today it has a simple street number: 99 Winnock Road.
Goodey was a pioneer of using a very fine type of cement paste which set like a rock, which he termed “cement stone”, but the concept for dwellings did not garner support and his own house was the only one ever built in Colchester with this material.
It was used elsewhere for decorative features, however, with a good example being along the upper façade of Barrack Street School, now the Wilson Marriage Adult Education Centre.
Next to James Goodey’s unique home is a council housing development from 1977 which is named Goodey Close, in recognition of the man who built the New Town Estate.
The architect for Goodey Close was the late Andrew Borges, who for many years was a borough councillor.
* To be continued, with the second instalment starting in Kendall Road.
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