Jaywick

Jaywick
Essex
Jaywick seafront
Location
Grid reference:	TM151135
Location:	51°46’46"N, 1°7’3"E
Data
Population:	4,665  (2001)
Post town:	Clacton-on-Sea
Postcode:	CO15
Dialling code:	01255
Local Government
Council:	Tendring
Parliamentary constituency:	Clacton

Jaywick is a seaside village in Essex, two miles west of Clacton-on-Sea and 17 miles from Colchester. To the west is the estuary of the River Colne. The village was built in the 1930s as a holiday resort for Londoners on the North Sea coast, but over time has become one of the most deprived areas in the country.

The land was originally a combination of fields and salt marshes, and was generally impractical for agricultural use. It was purchased by the entrepreneur Frank Stedman in 1928 to provide low cost and affordable holiday homes to working-class families, and became a popular holiday destination throughout the 1930s. After the Second World War, a shortage of housing meant the properties gradually became permanently inhabited despite being unsuitable for this purpose. The local community resisted demolition of the worst estates, and the government tightly controlled building regulations in the village while attempting to rehouse residents elsewhere.

Many of the holiday homes were never designed for long-term residence and are now in a state of disrepair: the Indices of deprivation published in 2010 counted part of the village as the most deprived area in England, and its status has not much improved since. Jaywick has significant problems with unemployment and a risk of flooding.

About the village

The Martello Tower, now an arts centre

Most shops are on the Broadway, the main shopping street in the village. One of the main attractions of the coastline is a 200-year-old Martello Tower, which is now an arts and heritage centre. The "46 Brooklands Gardens" artwork by Nathan Coley was erected at that location in Jaywick as a 3-month show piece.

History

Where Jaywick now stands was originally fields and salt marsh. A wooden spear from the Lower Paleolithic era, found locally in an area of foreshore erosion, is the oldest known man-made wooden artefact found in the British Isles. During the 19th century, the area was popular for shooting and contained a rifle range.

Because of its close proximity to the sea, Jaywick had never been a practical place for farming due to the risk from floods and the land remained unused. A sea wall was built in 1880 to protect against flooding.

A street in Jaywick

By the turn of the 20th century, campaigners such as William Morris had attempted to convince the virtues of self-sufficient communities for poor families away from large cities, which led to developments such as Peacehaven in Sussex in 1914. The original site of Jaywick was proposed by property developer Frank Stedman in 1928 as a cheap holiday retreat for Londoners. Stedman had noticed the increased popularity of Clacton as a holiday resort and believed that he could sell small plots of land to poor residents of the East End of London, which could contain holiday homes. Residents were encouraged to buy land and self-build properties, with plots being offered as little as £25. An initial emphasis was on well-being, health and fitness, with outdoor exercises being popular. However, Stedman was not one of the starry-eyed idealists: he sought profit from his land and some of the plans he had discussed, such as landscaping the development along with a lake and a sports centre, never materialised.

The original estate was developed in the shape of a car radiator grille, with the roads named after various vehicle manufacturers. Coaches regularly picked up holidaymakers throughout the 1930s from west Essex towns, Ilford and Romford.

An 18-inch gauge miniature railway operated in Jaywick from 1936 to 1939. The locomotive was a model of a GNR Stirling 4-2-2.

An abandoned house in Jaywick

Plotland development elsewhere in Britain was bulldozed following the Second World War, and various attempts were made by the local council to demolish Jaywick, but there was resistance from residents, who campaigned against this and won a preservation order in 1970. The council were unhappy about a housing development sitting on such a flood-prone site, and modern conveniences were slow in arriving. A mains sewer system was only installed in 1977.

In 1978, the government issued an "Article 4 Direction" to tightly control housing development in Jaywick. Under this direction, planning permission is required for home improvements that would not normally be needed elsewhere, including all extensions, porches and garden structures. The direction was further revised in 2010.

In the 1990s, 40 new prefabricated houses were built on adjacent land on a former holiday camp to rehouse some of the most dilapidated properties. Despite winning several architectural awards and being praised by the local government, only five of the older properties were demolished. The original development along Brooklands has faced demolition, particularly dilapidated properties, purchasing of vacant sites and providing new properties. New permanent residences in Brooklands are prohibited by council regulations. Tendring District Council hope that by 2026, the area will change sufficiently to be attractive for development, and to provide a self-sufficient service based economy for tourism.

Social issues

The shopping arcade

Despite being marketed as holiday homes, many of the original houses became permanent residences due to post-war housing shortages in London and by 1950 there was a significant year-round population. Jaywick now includes large numbers of retired and unemployed people. A 2011 report in The Guardian found that 62% of working age residents in Jaywick received benefits, compared to 15% national average. According to the Citizens Advice Bureau, 40% of residents are unable to work due to a disability or long term illness. 60% of pupils at Frobisher Primary School, on the edge of the village, receive free school meals.

A 2009 report found that four out of the ten cheapest streets in the eastern counties were in Jaywick, with property on Tamarisk Way selling for an average of £44,050. A 2013 report in The Guardian showed that bungalows were being sold on the Brooklands estate for around £20,000.

In 2012 Jaywick was labelled the UK's youth unemployment hotspot. Randeep Ramesh, writing in The Guardian, noted that there has been little employment available since Butlins closed in 1983. Local charity Signpost has helped young people find employment, which has become difficult due to many jobs being a significant distance away in Colchester or Ipswich. Tightening of building regulations has meant that simple builders jobs for cash are now illegal without appropriate health and safety training. Drug abuse is a particular problem in the area. Because of the area's reputation for economic deprivation, private developers are unwilling to invest there. In August 2013 a "one mile fresh food challenge" in Jaywick, organised by The Big Issue, found only "a bag of blackened bananas" and "potatoes at £2.29 per 2kg".

The derelict Mermaid Inn

The Jaywick Community Resource Centre sits on a former boating lake in Brooklands, and provides support to local residents. In 2010, two film makers compiled a documentary, Jaywick Escapes, which showed life in the village. The film combined archive footage from the estate's early years alongside recent interviews with recovering heroin addicts living in Jaywick. It was shown at the 2012 East End Film Festival and an extract was subsequently shown at the Science Museum. In 2015, " Jaywick - Benefits By The Sea" aired on Channel 5 (UK)|Channel 5. The programme looked at residents of the dilapidated town and their lifestyles. It included a 60-year-old man who claimed he had not been sober since he was 15.

Residents of the area in the Tudor Estate, outside the main deprived areas, complained and asked the Royal Mail to remove the name Jaywick from their postal address. They prefer to address themselves as “West Clacton”.

Flooding

During the North Sea flood of 1953, Jaywick was flooded, resulting in the deaths of 35 people. Since then, Coastal management|sea defences have been put in place and many precautions have been made to avoid flooding. Coastal Jaywick has benefited from a bulwark built of dredged sand as part of a £9.4 million upgrade. The residential areas are categorised under the highest risk of flooding in the country, and a council report anticipated that global warming would increase the risk to human life in Jaywick from flooding over the next 50 to 75 years. The area would be the first to be hit by floods in the event of a tidal surge over the marshes surrounding St Osyth.

The main road into the village is close to sea level and there is risk that a flood could cut off access for emergency services. Many roads, particularly around Brooklands, are unadopted without any public funding, which further hinders emergency access, as well as giving the area a "run down" look. Because properties are sited on marshland, road improvements tend to have a short lifespan and are quickly damaged in bad weather. In December 2013, due to a severe flood risk, all residents in Jaywick were asked by Essex Police to leave the area, to be homed in school buildings around Clacton.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Jaywick)

• jaywick.net
• What went wrong with Jaywick? – essay

References

Citations

• Aslet, Clive (2011). Villages of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages that Made the Countryside. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-408-81799-5. 
• Faultley, M.P.B.; Garon, J.H. (2004). Essex Coastline: Then and Now. ISBN 978-0-954-80100-7. 
• Gray, Fred (2006). Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society and Nature. Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-861-89274-4. 
• Hall, Peter; Ward, Peter (2014). Sociable Cities: The 21st-Century Reinvention of the Garden City. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-63595-6. 
• Stratton, Michael; Trinder, Barrie (2014). Twentieth Century Industrial Archaeology. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-74801-1. 

Further reading

• Lyons, Mary (2005). The Story of Jaywick Sands Estate. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-86077-336-5.