RICS Chartered Surveyors Colchester Essex

Approximate Population: 104,390

Colchester claims to be the oldest town in Britain. It was for a time the capital of Roman Britain and also claims to have the United Kingdom’s oldest recorded market. Colchester is 56 miles (90 km) northeast of London. It is connected to the capital by the A12 road and the Great Eastern Main Line.

Colchester is claimed to be the oldest recorded town in Britain on the grounds that it was mentioned by Pliny the Elder in AD 77. Its Celtic name was Camulodunon, meaning ‘the fortress of (the war god) Camulos’. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, a Roman legionary fortress was established and the name Camulodunon was modified to the Roman spelling of ‘Camulodunum’. Camulodunum served as the first Roman capital of Britain, but was attacked and destroyed during Boudica’s rebellion in AD 61.

Sometime after the destruction, London became the capital of the province of Britannia but it would seem that the council of the provincial natives still met at Colchester, where the Temple to the Divine Claudius served as the seat of this council. Later, when the Roman frontier moved north (c. AD 49), Camulodunum became a colonia known as Colonia Claudia Victricensis. In 2004 Colchester Archaeological Trust discovered the remains of a Roman Circus (chariot race track) underneath the Garrison in Colchester, a unique find in Britain.

The £22.7m eight-mile A120 Colchester Eastern Bypass opened in June 1982. Colchester and the surrounding area is currently undergoing significant regeneration. Colchester Town Watch was founded in 2001 to provide a ceremonial guard for the Mayor of Colchester and for civic events such as the Oyster Feast. The historic re-enactors wear a livery based on late Elizabethan dress. Colchester Town Watch is accompanied by the musicians of the Colchester Town Waits – a musical tradition dating back to the 14th century.

RICS Chartered Surveyors Colchester Essex

RICS Chartered Surveyors Staines Surrey

Approximate Population: 24,097

Staines is a Thames-side town in the Spelthorne borough of Surrey and part of the London Commuter Belt of South East England. It is a suburban development within the western bounds of the M25 motorway and located 17 miles west south-west of Charing Cross in London.

The name Staines is thought to derive from Old English for ’stones’, due to a long-lost site of monoliths in nearby Stanwell. Others believe the name to derive from ‘St Anne’s in the Thames’.

There has been a crossing of the River Thames at Staines since Roman times. Claudius led the Romans into Britain in 43 A.D and they settled in Staines the same year. Soon after this invasion the first Staines Bridge was constructed to provide an important Thames crossing point on main road from Londinium (London) to Calleva Atrebatum, near the present-day village of Silchester. The Roman name for Staines was “ad Pontes” (plural “at the bridges”) implying that there was more than one bridge and it is believed that these bridges traversed Church Island.

Staines was the major producer of linoleum, a type of floor covering, after the formation of the Linoleum Manufacturing Company in 1864 by its inventor, Frederick Walton. Linoleum became the main industry of the town and was a major employer in the area up until the 1960s. In 1876 about 220 and in 1911 about 350 people worked in the plant. By 1957 it employed some 300 people and in 1956 the factory produced about 2.675 m2. of linoleum each week. The term ‘Staines Lino’ became a world-wide name but the factory was closed around 1970 and is now the site of the Two Rivers shopping centre. A bronze statue of two lino workers in Staines High Street commemorates the Staines Lino Factory. The Spelthorne Museum in Staines has a display dedicated to the Linoleum Manufacturing Company.

Staines was the site of the Staines air disaster in 1972, at the time the worst air crash to have occurred on British soil, until the Lockerbie disaster of 1988. The crash was commemorated in June 2004, with the opening of a dedicated garden, created at the request of relatives, near to the crash site, and the unveiling of a stained glass window at St. Marys Church, where a memorial service was held.

Staines has a fairly compact town centre mainly focused on a wide pedestrianised High Street, housing most familiar names such as Waterstones, Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, T.K. Maxx, JD Sports, Sony, McDonald’s, Argos, PCworld,Tesco, Waitrose Monsoon and HMV where Hard-Fi organised a C.D signing on 10 March 2008. Smaller independent units can be found in Church Street including Iris Bloomfield Florists and Refresh Juice Cafe, Clarence Street and the eastern end of the High Street. A market in the pedestrianised High Street is held every Wednesday and Saturday. It is one of the largest and busiest street markets in Surrey. A moderately-sized shopping centre (Elmsleigh) is directly behind the High Street. A retail park was opened in 2002 called Two Rivers which is bisected by the confluence of the rivers Wraysbury and Colne. Retailers include Waitrose as well as a Vue cinema, gym and cafes.

RICS Chartered Surveyors Staines Surrey

RICS Chartered Surveyors Lincoln Lincolnshire

Approximate Population: 87,800

Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England. The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of around 101,000 – the 2001 census gave the entire urban area of Lincoln a population of 120,779. The council identifies a ‘Greater Lincoln’ catchment area covering surrounding villages and towns, which has a population of 250,000. It has several twin towns: Port Lincoln, South Australia; Radomsko, Poland; Tangshan, China; and — most notably — Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany.

After the first destructive Viking raids Lincoln once again rose to some importance. In Viking times Lincoln was a trading centre important enough to issue coins from its own mint.   After the establishment of Dane Law in 886, Lincoln became one of The Five Boroughs in the East Midlands.   Over the next few centuries, Lincoln once again rose to prominence.   In 1068, two years after the Norman Conquest, William I ordered Lincoln Castle to be built on the site of the former Roman settlement, for the same strategic reasons and using the same road.

Construction of the first Lincoln Cathedral, within its close or walled precinct facing the castle, began when the see was removed from Dorchester and completed in 1092; it was rebuilt after a fire but was destroyed by an unusual earthquake in 1185.

The rebuilt Lincoln Minster, enlarged to the east at each rebuilding, was on a magnificent scale, its crossing tower crowned by a spire reputed to have been 160 m (525 ft) high, the highest in Europe.   When completed the central of the three spires is widely accepted to have succeeded the Great Pyramids of Egypt as the tallest man-made structure in the world.

RICS Chartered Surveyors Lincoln Lincolnshire

RICS Chartered Surveyors Clacton Essex

Approximate Population: 53,000

Clacton-on-Sea is the largest town on the Tendring Peninsula, in Essex, England and was founded in 1871. It is a seaside resort that attracted many tourists in the 1960s and ’70s, but which like other English resorts has been in decline since foreign holidays became more fashionable and affordable making it more popular as a retirement hotspot these days. It is located between Jaywick and Holland-on-sea along the coastline and Great Clacton to the north. The relevant local authority is Tendring District Council.

Clacton has a pleasure pier, arcades, a golf course, caravan parks and an airfield. The town and its beaches are still popular with tourists in the summer, and there is an annual entertainment programme including the Clacton carnival held the second Saturday in August and lasting for a week. Clacton Airshow, an aerial display takes place on the Thursday and Friday before the August Bank Holiday involving historic and modern aircraft such as the Lancaster, Spitfire, Hurricane, helicopters, Harrier, Jaguar, Tornado, wing-walkers and the Red Arrows.

Clacton-on-Sea is served by a bustling shopping area with many of the usual national chains represented and a Factory Shopping Village, in the north of the town.

Clacton-on-Sea has two theatres, the West Cliff Theatre and the Princes Theatre. The West Cliff is one of the last theatres in the country to put on an old style summer show.

Clacton was the site of the lower Palaeolithic Clactonian industry of flint tool manufacture. Great Clacton was founded by the Celts in c.100BC. There are some vague traces of Romans using the Clacton area as a seaside resort. The name Clacton dates from c.500 AD when the area was settled by Saxons. The original name, Claccingaton, means ‘the village of Clacc’s people’. The Domesday Book records the village as Clachintuna.

RICS Chartered Surveyors Clacton Essex

RICS Chartered Surveyors Rugby Warwickshire

Approximate Population: 61,988

Rugby is a market town in Warwickshire, in the West Midlands of England, on the River Avon. The town has a population of 61,988 (2001 census) making it the second largest town in the county. The larger Borough of Rugby has a population of 91,600 (2005 estimate).

Rugby is 13 miles (21 km) east of Coventry, on the eastern edge of Warwickshire, near the borders with Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.

The town is credited with being the birthplace of rugby football.

Early Iron age settlement existed in the Rugby area, and a few miles outside what is now Rugby, existed a Roman settlement known as Tripontium. Rugby was originally a small Anglo-Saxon farming settlement, and was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Rocheberie. Rugby obtained a charter to hold a market in 1255, and soon developed into a small country market town.

One of the most notable landmarks around Rugby was, until August 2007, the Rugby VLF transmitter, a large radio transmitting station located just to the east of the town. The station was opened in 1926 and was used to transmit the MSF time signal. Several of the masts however were decommissioned and demolished by explosives in 2004, although a few including four of the biggest masts remained until 2007. (Firing the explosive charges was delayed by rabbits gnawing the wires). The remaining four ‘tall’ masts were demolished on the afternoon of August 2, 2007 with no prior publicity.

RICS Chartered Surveyors Rugby Warwickshire