In his first instalment about the history of Colchester’s “New Town Estate”, dating back to 1880, Sir Bob Russell stopped where his tour went from Winnock Road down Charles Street to Kendall Road. His descriptive walk now continues in this second and final instalment.
THE New Town Estate, designed by James Goodey, who lived in the centre of his unique development of houses for “all classes” in Victorian Britain, featured among the 470 dwellings several corner shops, a public house (originally The Blue Boar but now The New Town Tavern), in Kendall Road, and The Royal Mortar, in Military Road.
It also featured what today would seem a strange thing to build in a residential area - a factory.
This was boot manufacturer AC George’s on the corner of Charles Street and Kendall Road.
Later it became a printing works for calendar firm Rose of Colchester before the company relocated to the Colchester Business Park and the main building was converted by the council (in 1992) into flats bearing the name “Rose House”.
The houses all along Kendall Road were designed for working class people.
Houses for working class residents were also built at the western end of Winnock Road, in Charles Street and James Street (two link roads between Winnock Road and Kendall Road), the low-numbered houses in Wimpole Road and Granville Road (between Military Road and Gladstone Road).
At the end of Charles Street, turn right and walk in an easterly direction along Kendall Road to the junction with New Town Road.
Note the impressive building on the corner.
A blue plaque records that this was Colchester Co-operative Society’s first branch grocery store in 1885 (the main store was in Culver Street).
This was incorporated into a well-designed housing scheme at the end of the 20th century and is called “Beehive Court”.
The beehive is an emblem of the Co-operative Movement and such an emblem can be seen at the top of the building on the corner – almost certainly made from the cement stone paste pioneered by Goodey.
Opposite the junction with New Town Road is “School House”, council flats built in 1983 on the site of a former Victorian school which burnt down after the school moved to a new site off Recreation Road.
Next door is “Wheatsheaf Court” (the wheatsheaf is also a Co-op emblem), which is another 20th century housing development (private) built on the site of the Co-op Bakery.
Turn right into New Town Road and, in contrast to the “working class” houses in Kendall Road, observe the “middle class” houses on your right.
Turn into Winsley Road, which is also “middle class” in origin.
Several houses in the New Town Estate have engraved stones giving names, along with the year they were built – something which regrettably (in my opinion) is not found that often on housing developments.For example, in addition to their street numbers, in New Town Road (from Kendall Road) there are four houses with a stone saying they are “Oxford Cottages” with the date 1882 and another four named “Cambridge Cottages”, dated 1883.
Between these two Oxbridge named houses are eight called “Gladstone Terrace” with individual numbers one to eight as part of the masonry above the front doors.
Among those in Winsley Road are semi-detached “Causton’s Cottages” (1880) and “Rebow’s Cottages” (1881).
In 1880 Richard Knight Causton was elected Liberal MP for Colchester.
The Rebow family were prominent in local public life in centuries past.
Walk eastwards along Winsley Road towards Wimpole Road and then turn right in a southerly direction.
The houses on this side of Wimpole Road feature the different “classes” of houses as you proceed from one end of the road to the other.
They are part of the original New Town Estate as far as the Military Road cross-roads with Old Heath Road and Bourne Road.
Houses along Military Road as far as New Town Road are also part of James Goodey’s carefully-planned estate.
Houses on the opposite (eastern) side of Wimpole Road – also in the roads off (King Stephen and Rebow, Morant and Harsnett) – were built following the original New Town Estate, but without the mix of varied houses for “upper, middle and working classes” which characterised the New Town Estate.
Rose House – built as a shoe factory, later it became a printing works and is now converted into flats
Houses in roads built on either side of Bourne Road, up to the First World War, also did not follow the concept of “mixed classes” as pioneered by James Goodey.
Goodey was a leading Liberal and Gladstone Road was named after the Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone.
Granville Road takes its name from Lord Granville, Gladstone’s right-hand made in the House of Lords who served as Foreign Secretary and Colonial Secretary.
James Street is named after James Goodey and Charles Street after Charles Denton, who was Goodey’s solicitor.
Roads bearing the names Kendall, Winsley and Winnock honour three great benefactors from previous centuries whose bequests resulted in the creation of the Winsleys, Winnocks and Kendall almshouses.
Three “famous sons” from the New Town Estate were Colchester industrialist Bernard Mason, whose family firm of EN Mason and Son (led by his father Ernest) started in the front room of their home at 2 Winsley Road in around 1905, Second World War diarist EJ Rudsdale, who lived with his parents at 66 Winnock Road, and one-time Mayor Richard Wheeler (1970-71), of wine merchants Lay and Wheeler, who was born at 28 New Town Road.
Around a century after the New Town Estate was built, in the late 1980s, it made new history when the roads in this area were the first in Colchester to have traffic-calming speed bumps and the first in Essex to have a 20mph speed limit.
Winnock Road was split in two with landscaping at the crossroads with New Town Road to prevent rat-running through traffic, which certainly made life safer and quieter in an area built before the invention of motor vehicles and where only a handful of houses have off-street parking.
The New Town Estate is unique and the concept of “mixing the classes” was never repeated.
It is an important part of Colchester’s social and built history.
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