shewhomust | Play Mistley for me

Yesterday started out grey and damp, so we thought we might as well visit Harwich's museum. It turned out to be one of those old-fashioned local museums full of a glorious jumble of Stuff: fossilised shark's teeth, ceramic models of local buildings, information boards about the voyage of the Mayflower, railway (and ferry) memorabilia. An unexpected, but logical, thread leads from a maquette of the memorial to the British children evacuated during the War (actual memorial in the National Arboretum) via information about children brought to Harwich by the Kindertransport and accommodated in a local holiday camp to the same camp's moment of glory as the setting for Hi-de-Hi!. And of course there was an outbreak of shanty singing.

We weren't quite ready to leave Harwich yet. Not a problem, because there were still corners of Friday's heritage walk that we hadn't quite reached. We had seen the High Lighthouse, but only glimpsed the Low (details) so we strolled over for a closer look. It turned out to be another museum (maritime, this time), which offered rather more information than I was now in a state to absorb, much of it in closely printed text. The lighthouse itself is a delightful building, though, worth climbing its stairs (ladders, really) to admire. Afterwards, a short walk along the front, past the Redoubt where the King's German Artillery were busy defending the fort with much firing of muskets, brought us back to the car, and now finally we were ready to set off.

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.