Colchester ( ) is a city in north-eastern Essex, England. At the 2021 census the built up area had a population of 130,245, making it the second-largest settlement in Essex, after Southend-on-Sea. It gives its name to the wider Colchester local government district which also covers an extensive surrounding area. The demonym is Colcestrian.
Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colchester therefore claims to be Britain's first city. It has been an important military base since the Roman era, with Colchester Garrison currently housing the 16th Air Assault Brigade.
The city is on the River Colne, and lies north-east of London. It is connected to London by the A12 road and the Great Eastern Main Line railway. Colchester is less than from London Stansted Airport and from the port of Harwich.
Attractions in and around the city include St Botolph's Priory, Colchester Zoo, and several art galleries. Colchester Castle was constructed in the eleventh century on earlier Roman foundations; it now contains a museum. The main campus of the University of Essex is located between Colchester and Wivenhoe. Local government is the responsibility of Colchester City Council and Essex County Council.
Name There are several theories about the origin of the name Colchester. Some contend that is derived from the Latin words colonia (referring to a type of Roman settlement with rights equivalent to those of Roman citizens, one of which was believed to have been founded in the vicinity of Colchester) and castra, meaning fortifications (referring to the city walls, the oldest in Britain).Crummy, Philip (1997) City of Victory; the story of Colchester – Britain's first Roman town. Published by Colchester Archaeological Trust ()Ashdown-Hill, John (2009). Mediaeval Colchester's Lost Landmarks. Published by The Breedon Books Publishing Company Limited. () The earliest forms of the name Colchester are Colenceaster and Colneceastre from the 10th century, with the modern spelling of Colchester being found in the 15th century. In this way of interpreting the name, the River Colne which runs through the area takes its name from Colonia as well. Cologne (German Köln) also gained its name from a similar etymology (from its Roman name Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium).
Other etymologists are confident that the Colne's name is pre-Roman, sharing its origin with several other rivers Colne or Clun around Britain, and that Colchester is derived from Colne and Castra. Ekwall went as far as to say "it has often been held that Colchester contains as first element [Latin] colonia ... this derivation is ruled out of court by the fact that Colne is the name of several old villages situated a good many miles from Colchester and on the Colne. The identification of Colonia with Colchester is doubtful."Eilert Ekwall (1928). English River-names. Published by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. ()
The popular association of the name with King Coel has no academic merit.
History
Prehistory The gravel hill upon which Colchester is built was formed in the Middle Pleistocene period and was shaped into a terrace between the Anglian glaciation and the Ipswichian glaciation by an ancient precursor to the River Colne.Crummy, Philip (1992) Colchester Archaeological Report 6: Excavations at Culver Street, the Gilberd School, and other sites in Colchester 1971–85. Published by Colchester Archaeological Trust () From these deposits Palaeolithic flint tools, including at least six Acheulian handaxes, have been found. Further flint tools made by hunter gatherers living in the Colne Valley during the Mesolithic have been discovered, including a tranchet axe from Middlewick.Wymer, J. (ed.) "Gazetteer of Mesolithic sites in England and Wales", in CBA Research Report 20 In the 1980s an archaeological inventory showed that over 800 shards of pottery from the Neolithic, Bronze Age and early Iron Age have been found within Colchester, along with many examples of worked flint. This included a pit found at Culver Street containing a ritually placed Neolithic grooved ware pot, as well as find spots containing later Deverel-Rimbury bucket urns. Colchester is surrounded by Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments that pre-date the town, including a Neolithic henge at Tendring, large Bronze Age barrow cemeteries at Dedham and Langham, and a larger example at Brightlingsea consisting of a cluster of 22 barrows.Strachan, David (1998) Essex from the Air, Archaeology and history from aerial photographs. Published by Essex County Council ()
Celtic origins
Colchester is said to be the oldest recorded town in Britain on the grounds that it was mentioned by Pliny the Elder, who died in AD 79,Pliny, Naturalis Historia, II, 187 although the Celtic name of the town, Camulodunon appears on coins minted by tribal chieftain Tasciovanus in the period 2010 BC. Before the Roman conquest of Britain it was already a centre of power for Cunobelin known to Shakespeare as Cymbeline king of the Catuvellauni (c. 5 BCAD 40), who minted coins there.P. Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1981), pp. 55–6 Its Celtic name, Camulodunon, variously represented as CA, CAM, CAMV, CAMVL and CAMVLODVNO on the coins of Cunobelinus, means 'the fortress of [the war god] Camulos'.V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2004), p. 113; T. W. Potter, 'The Transformation of Britain', in P. Salway, ed., The Roman Era (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002), p. 21 During the 30s AD Camulodunon controlled a large swathe of Southern and Eastern Britain, with Cunobelin called "King of the Britons" by Roman writers. Camulodunon is sometimes popularly considered one of many possible sites around Britain for the legendary (perhaps mythical) Camelot of King Arthur, though the name Camelot (first mentioned by the 12th century French Arthurian storyteller Chrétien de Troyes) is most likely a corruption of Camlann, a now unknown location first mentioned in the 10th century Welsh annalistic text Annales Cambriae, identified as the place where Arthur was slain in battle.Brugger, Ernst "Beiträge zur Erklärung der arthurischen Geographie II: Gorre", in: Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, Volume 28, Berlin, 1905, pp. 1–71 (p. 22-23).
Roman period
Soon after the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, a Roman legionary fortress was established,J. Nelson, ed., The Victoria History of the County of Essex, IX (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1994), pp. 7–10 the first in Britain. Later, when the Roman frontier moved outwards and the twentieth legion had moved to the west (c. AD 49), Camulodunum became a colonia named in a second-century inscription as Colonia Victricensis. This contained a large and elaborate Temple to the Divine Claudius,Nelson, ed. V.C.H. Essex, IX, p. 10 the largest classical-style temple in Britain, as well as at least seven other Romano-British temples. Colchester is home to two of the five Roman theatres found in Britain; the example at Gosbecks (site of the Iron Age royal farmstead) is the largest in Britain, able to seat 5,000.
Camulodunum served as a provincial Roman capital of Britain, but was attacked and destroyed during Boudica's rebellion in AD 61.Salway, Roman Britain, pp. 89–90, 117–18 Sometime after the destruction, London became the capital of the province of Britannia.Salway, Roman Britain, p. 530 Colchester's city walls c. 3,000 yd. long were built c.65–80 A.D. when the Roman town was rebuilt after the Boudicca rebellion. 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.D. Mattingly, An Imperial Possession; Britain in the Roman Empire (Penguin Books: London, 2007), pp. 269–70 The city reached its peak in the second and third centuries AD.Faulkner, Neil. (1994) Late Roman Colchester, In Oxford Journal of Archaeology 13(1) It may have reached a population of 30,000 in that period.
In 2014 a hoard of jewellery, known as The Fenwick Hoard, named for the shop it was found beneath, was discovered in the town centre. The director of Colchester Archaeological Trust, Philip Crummy, described the hoard as being of "national importance and one of the finest ever uncovered in Britain".
Chariot Racing
A Roman circus was discovered in 2004 during archaeological investigations undertaken by Colchester Archaeological Trust prior to the redevelopment of Colchester Garrison, some 450m to the south of the walled part of the Roman town. Glass and pottery vessels decorated with scenes from chariot races had been discovered in the C19 and C20. Based on the foundations, it is estimated that the circus could accommodate around 8,000 spectators. Although dating evidence for the construction of the circus is limited and imprecise, it has been suggested that it was built in the AD C2; demolition may have started around the mid to late AD 270s.
Excavation has also confirmed that the circus was surrounded by a contemporary cemetery from which 516 burials have recovered.
Sub-Roman and Saxon period
There is evidence of hasty re-organisation of Colchester's defences around 268–82 AD, followed later, during the fourth century, by the blocking of the Balkerne Gate.J. Cooper, ed., The Victoria History of the County of Essex, IX: The Borough of Colchester (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1995), pp. 16–17, 248
The archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler was the first to propose that the lack of early Anglo-Saxon finds in a triangle between London, Colchester and St Albans could indicate a 'sub-Roman triangle' where British rule continued after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons.R. E. M. Wheeler, London and the Saxons (London, 1935) Since then excavations have revealed some early Saxon occupation, including a fifth-century wooden hut built on the ruins of a Roman house in present-day Lion Walk. Archaeological excavations have shown that public buildings were abandoned and is very doubtful whether Colchester survived as a settlement with any urban characteristics after the sixth century.J. N. L. Myres, The English Settlements (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1986), p. 214
The chronology of its revival is obscure. But the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, attributed to Nennius, mentions the town, which it calls Cair Colun, in a list of the thirty most important cities in Britain.Nennius, ed. J. Morris (Phillimore: London and Chichester, 1980); Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, p. 149 Colchester was in the area assigned to the Danelaw in c.880 and remained in Danish hands until 917 when it was besieged and recaptured by the army of Edward the Elder.D, Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon History (Blackwell: Oxford, 1981), pp. 47, 56–8; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. G. N. Garmondsway, 2nd edition (Dent: London, 1954), p. 103; F, Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edition, (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1947), pp. 324–5 The tenth-century Saxons called the town Colneceastre, which is directly equivalent to the Cair Colun of 'Nennius'.Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, p. 149 The tower of Holy Trinity Church is late Saxon work.
Medieval and Tudor periods
Medieval Colchester's main landmark is Colchester Castle, which is an 11th-century Norman keep and built on top of the vaults of the old Roman temple. There are notable medieval ruins in Colchester, including the surviving gateway of the Benedictine abbey of St John the Baptist (known locally as "St John's Abbey"), and the ruins of the Augustinian priory of St Botolph (known locally as "St Botolph's Priory"). Many of Colchester's parish churches date from this period.