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Play Mistley for me
Oct. 13th, 2024 06:31 pm( Two museums in Harwich )
From Harwich to Colchester, where we are spending the next few days, is only a half-hour's drive, so although we had planned to come straight here, we allowed ourselves to be distracted by signs pointing to Mistley Towers. I didn't know what this was, but I thought I'd heard of it somewhere...
It turns out to be an English Heritage property, two ornate classical towers which are all that remains of a church built by Robert Adam for a patron with more money than sense (call it, The Only Way is Essex 1776). In order to visit it, we had pulled off the main road and parked alongside a goods yard bordering the River Stour. Further along the river we had a view of something massive which, if I had been in Yorkshire, I would have identified as a mill (but we aren't in Yorkshire). It seemed very incongruous, this extravagant classical folly and this industrial not-quite-wasteland - and then I spotted some chimneys (domestic, this time, not industrial) which turned out to be Mistley House, at the near end of a very pretty High Street, and followed the street through increasing rain to the Swan Fountain. Blame the rain, or the aroma of coffee coming from a barn-like structure beyond, but I took this unexpected and lifelike bird for some sort of post-modern construction - but no, it is a remnant of Adam's planned 18th Century salt-water spa development.
The barn was Mistley Quay Workshops, an impressive timber structure which houses both the café and Cooper's Gallery, a shop packed with pretty things, some of which looked very familiar: had I come across James Dodds before? Yes, it turns out, I had. This was an unexpected find, and I bought some cards, plus a little book (so I have at least partially observed National Bookshop Day).
What did I want from a holiday in Essex? Well, this, among other things: to discover places as unexpected as Mistley.
From Harwich to Colchester, where we are spending the next few days, is only a half-hour's drive, so although we had planned to come straight here, we allowed ourselves to be distracted by signs pointing to Mistley Towers. I didn't know what this was, but I thought I'd heard of it somewhere...
It turns out to be an English Heritage property, two ornate classical towers which are all that remains of a church built by Robert Adam for a patron with more money than sense (call it, The Only Way is Essex 1776). In order to visit it, we had pulled off the main road and parked alongside a goods yard bordering the River Stour. Further along the river we had a view of something massive which, if I had been in Yorkshire, I would have identified as a mill (but we aren't in Yorkshire). It seemed very incongruous, this extravagant classical folly and this industrial not-quite-wasteland - and then I spotted some chimneys (domestic, this time, not industrial) which turned out to be Mistley House, at the near end of a very pretty High Street, and followed the street through increasing rain to the Swan Fountain. Blame the rain, or the aroma of coffee coming from a barn-like structure beyond, but I took this unexpected and lifelike bird for some sort of post-modern construction - but no, it is a remnant of Adam's planned 18th Century salt-water spa development.
The barn was Mistley Quay Workshops, an impressive timber structure which houses both the café and Cooper's Gallery, a shop packed with pretty things, some of which looked very familiar: had I come across James Dodds before? Yes, it turns out, I had. This was an unexpected find, and I bought some cards, plus a little book (so I have at least partially observed National Bookshop Day).
What did I want from a holiday in Essex? Well, this, among other things: to discover places as unexpected as Mistley.
