TOM KING takes a look at a new book on the villages of Hockley, Hullbridge and Hawkwell, which reveals a curious history hiding behind the Southend suburbs

Like oysters or yodelling hamsters, the Hockley-Hullbridge area is something of an acquired taste.

This month, a lot more people are going to acquire the taste, thanks to the arrival of Lesley Vingoe's 126-page history book, Hockley, Hullbridge and Hawkwell Past.

For many people the first reaction may be: "She's managed to write 126 pages on the place! The woman must be a genius."

Yet anybody who cares to dip into this new book for just a few minutes will start to appreciate the fascination of HHH. The suburban development is edged with haunting landscapes and infused with curious history.

At first sight, the yoking together of these three villages may seem a rather artificial exercise. The only thing they seem to have in common is that they are all overshadowed by their larger neighbours Rayleigh and Rochford.

In fact, they form a natural band of sister villages, hemmed by the River Crouch below and the densely wooded hill above. To this day, nobody seems to have agreed on a name for that hill, although it is one of the most dominant features of the entire Essex landscape.

Today, the river and the wooded hill may seem little more than pleasant recreational areas, but to the peoples who built the three villages, they were formidable forces of nature, almost godlike in the power that they held over men.

Between the river and the high forest, however, these settlers found a relatively safe area to create settlements.

One fascinating relic survives from the dim past, is in the shape of Plumberow Mount, the hilltop pimple of earth in Hockley. An appealing theory suggests that the mount was one of the signalling stations of the Saxon shore system.

The entire coast from the Wash to Southampton Water could be alerted to invasion within a few hours using this sophisticated system of beacons and lanterns.

The villages survived down the years on agriculture and that other great Essex estuary-side industry, salt-making (if the evaporation of seawater can truly be called "making" salt).

But it has always been a neglected area. Even the local vicars had a habit of living as far away as possible. They have been happy to reside in such places as Kirby Kendal in the Lake District and Salisbury, Wiltshire, shunning darkest Essex.

Yet HH&H produced their fair share of redoubtable characters and eccentrics. Among them was Hockley curate William Tyms, locked up in a London coal-hole for preaching against the Catholic doctrine of Queen Mary. Undeterred, he continued to smuggle out sermons to his Hockley congregation - written in his own blood.

Another Hockley character who will appeal to all modern whingers everywhere was William Waight. In his will, he begged to be buried outside the church door.

Having been trampled on all his life, he reckoned he would feel more at home if the process continued after death.

The slumbering villages finally came into their own with the arrival of the railway. The area became a sort of woodland equivalent to Southend.

Thousands of day-tripping Londoners would mix and match a walk in the woods with a trip to the seaside. So much so that, in 1928, the village magazine reported a roaring trade for local shoe blacks.

Folk who had muddied their shoes in the woods would queue to have them polished, before the trip back to London.

Hockley woods also attained another moment of glory when they provided the foundation timbers for Southend Pier.

HH&H's most famous historical features are, of course, the old spa buildings. The Spa Hotel and the magnificent early Victorian pump-room remain to this day as extraordinary white elephants in the midst of all those bungalows.

The saga of Hockley's bid to rival Bath and Tunbridge Wells is well told by Lesley Vingoe. As often is the case, the story of a failure proves more colourful than the success stories of other towns.

The waters were developed by a local resident, Mrs Clay, who noticed that when she left Hockley her health took a nose dive. Clearly there was, as they say, something in the water.

It was claimed that Hockley water could cure asthma, rickets, kidney and stomach complaints. For a while, fashionable Londoners swallowed the idea, in more ways than one.

Alas, the sheer remoteness and dullness of the villages outweighed any attraction of the waters. There was just nothing to do in Hockley except drink.

Yet as this book convincingly establishes, Hockley, Hullbridge and Hawkwell aren't such dull places after all.

The last, and only, time that an author settled down to write a book about this area was in 1842, with the appearance of A Brief Account of Hockley Spa Near Southend.

Lesley Vingoe's book could actually make these half-forgotten villages trendy among history-buffs and countrygoers - and that, as Memories can testify, is a growing army.

River view - The Crouch at the bottom of Ferry Road, Hullbridge in the 1920s. These pictures and more are from Lesley Vingoe's book, right, published by Phillimore at £14.99

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