ColchesterHistoricBuildingsForum

Location

Attractive old public house on large plot, on Lexden Road. Prominent position. Peg-tile roof. 18th century or earlier. Presumably timber-framed but needs investigation.

[The Crown was a beer house from 1861 to 1949, when it became a public house.]

Old postcard by kind permission of J Jephcott.

Location

Very large corner house. Red brick. Decorative terracotta panel. Not on the OS 1897 map.

Location

Red brick, three storeys, adjacent to the Dickens Hotel. Survival from original St Botolph's Corner. Appears to consist of two properties which share a common design of frontage. Roof missing possibly as a result of bomb damage in WW2. No cavity walls and therefore probably pre c 1885. Upper windows in the front centre and left have been replaced. Windows on the right of a different design. These have horns. If original, they suggest the building is post c 1850. Date c c 1850-80.
Nos 2-4, station house and the railway station form a prominent 19th-century group, of which the station house is a listed building.

Location

House subdivided into 2 shops with gothic window. Survival from old Queen Street. Peg-tile roof. Needs investigation.

*** in Charles Debenham painting 'The Money Shop, Colchester' (date??)

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Location

[JB] Small late C18 or early C19 cottage. Single storey and attics. Ground floor of red brick. Gambrel roof, now covered with machine-made tiles, with catslide roof to rear. Two ground-floor windows with four-centred arched heads, their shaope echoed by the casements of the dormers above them. Gabled porch. [JB]

Plaque on the front of Church Cottage records the position of Peddars Cross.
Forms a group with the war memorial, All Saints' Church and the Leather Bottle pub opposite.

Location

Plaque: Connaught Villas 1877 T + W.
Four-storey building in grey brick including semi-basements (unusual in Colchester) and dormer windows set at eaves level. The existence of the semi-basements means that the front doors have to be reached via sets of stone steps. The loss of all its original windows and some doors is offset by the survival of a complete and extensive set of railings. Alexandra Road has a variety of Victorian buildings in it which, combined with the rise in its street level, give the street a distinctive personality. The interest in this building resides in its contemporary railings (G B Gibbon, Dock Foundry, Ipswich), its unusual design for Colchester, its group value, and its contribution to the street scene.

In sale catalogue of 1944 held by ERO, no 19 is called 'Tor House'.

Location

Plaque: Alexandra House. Pair of substantial red brick houses of three storeys including basement. Later dormer windows to provide additional accommodation in the attic. Similar in configuration to 19-20 further along the road. Original windows in left-hand house. Original doors and railings in both. Door-cases framed by pilasters with Ionic capitals and flat canopies. Flat canopies supported by brackets over the windows. Four-pane double sash windows. Date c 1870.

Location

Includes 21 Oxford Road (east side).
Large, very prominent corner building, on corner of Creffield Road and Oxford Road. Terrace of four houses. Uncoursed stone, clay tiles, ashlar dressings. Tower on corner - eccentric. Three gables to Creffield Road.
Built in 1886 by stonemason and architect L J Watts who must have bought material generated by the demolition of St Runwald's church, reworked what he could to make his cemetery memorials, and then disposed of the residue as building rubble in at least three different buildings which he designed: St Runwald's in Salisbury Avenue (1886), The Cloisters in Maldon Road (1886), and St Runwald's Terrace (1884).
Watts was an immensely successful Colchester businessman, a stonemason who pioneered mass production of tombstones and marble fireplaces from his works outside the Castle. The frequent Watts adverts in papers and magazines all over Metropolitan Essex, demonstrate the extent of this remarkable business (which still trades) by claiming 'over 9,000 cemetery monuments... in Essex.....London etc. in last 30 years'. Watts company still trading in the town.
Later St. Runwald's School. First head was possibly Mrs MacCauley.
Later still Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher) lived in the second house from the right.
ERO D/B 6 Pb2/381 1884 4 plans Building plan of houses, CREFFIELD ROAD, Colchester, for L.J. Watts (owner and architect) (not checked)

Location

Roman church (built c AD 340) with some restoration of the plan.

Location

Well-preserved terrace of four houses, each of two bays. White brick. Recessed porches with arched openings. Double two-pane sash windows with horns. Date 1860-70.

With no 2 Sussex Road makes an attactive row on a prominent corner site. [JB]

[1 photo. by jA]