Jaywick to St Osyth Circular walk 4th April 2019

On Thursday the 4th of April 2019 My dog Ben and I set off from home to drive to Jaywick,Clacton in Essex. After a 1 hr 10 minute drive, I park up outside Martello Beach campsite and had a look about the site as I'm considering leaving a tourer there all season if I can find a tourer.

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I leave the site and walk along the seawall at Jaywick.

Jaywick was constructed in the 1930s as a holiday resort for Londoners, 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 unsuitable for agricultural use. It was purchased by the entrepreneur Frank Stedman in 1928 to provide low cost, affordable holiday homes for 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 not being designed for regular use. 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. According to the Index of Multiple Deprivation of both 2010 and 2015, the eastern half of the village is the most deprived area of England. Jaywick has significant problems with unemployment and is at risk of flooding, despite several attempts by the local council and government to transform the area.

The name, which was first recorded in 1438 in the form Clakyngewyk, means "dwelling associated with a man named *Clacc". The first element was later dropped, giving at first Gey wyck (1584) and eventually the modern form.

Jaywick Martello Tower supports creative collaborations relating to the themes of Community, Heritage and Environment that affect our lives today.

The tower, built in 1809, was one of 29 Martello towers on the east coast of England. They were constructed to defend the country against invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte and his armies. In total, 103 Martello Towers were built between 1804 and 1812, 74 were built between 1804 and 1808 along the Kent and Sussex coast from Folkestone to Seaford, and 29 along the east coast between Point Clear near St Osyth and Aldeburgh from 1808 to 1812. The south coast towers were numbered 1 – 74 and the east coast towers were lettered A – Z. Three other east coast towers are known as AA, BB and CC.

I now reach Lee Over Sands.

Lee-over-Sands, is a small coastal village in the Tendring district of Essex, England. It is located close to the mouth of the River Colne into the North Sea and is in the civil parish of St Osyth.


A sandspit called Colne Point is offshore from the village. Colne Point Nature Reserve, a shingle ridge enclosing a saltmarsh, is to the west of the village on the site of a World War I gravel works. Jaywick Martello Tower is 1.8 miles (2.9 km) east of Lee-over-Sands.


The area is subject to flooding, and was severely affected by the North Sea flood of 1953 when the seawall was breached in many locations near the village. Thirty-seven people died in nearby Jaywick, 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Lee-over-Sands. In January 2017 following a threat of coastal flooding, an evacuation of 2,500 homes in Lee-Over-Sands and nearby Jaywick was planned but in the event not required.


A number of houses are on the seaward side of the seawall, on Beach Road. One house on Beach Road won the RIBA East Award 2017 and the RIBA East Small Project Award 2017, and was long-listed for the national RIBA House of the Year award.

Colne Point Nature Reserve

Ray Creek winds through the maze of saltmarsh before flowing past the long shingle ridge that hugs the coastline. The mix of exposed mudflats, shell banks and shingle pools are host to a plethora of migratory waders in spring and autumn, providing a rich feeding ground, while during the winter months you can hear the distinctive ‘ruk-ruk-ruk’ of Brent Geese. Looking skywards, the reserve is an important point on the migratory route for many Finches, Chats, Pipits, Skylarks, Swallows and Martins. In the summer a small colony of Little Terns can be seen on the shingle bank, where they occasionally nest in this ideal habitat, along with many other breeding birds.

Look to the ground and you may catch site of some of the rare invertebrates that call this reserve home, with plenty of solitary bees and wasps that nest down in the sandy substrate. Colne Point is one of the only sites in the country to find a rare spider species that lives in the shingle!

In the rich saltmarsh habitat, you can find rare plant species such as Golden Samphire and Small cord-grass, while across the shingle and sand ridge Yellow Horned Poppy, Sea Poppy, Bindweed and Spurge thrive.

Now I walk up a Beach Road towards the Sewerage treatment centre where I take a footpath just after.

Beach Road

We are now walking over St Osyth Marshes.

We pass a few Owl nest boxes, I passed one and unexpectedly a Barn Owl flies off. Lovely to see ,just wish I had a good look at it and maybe time for a photo.

We walked pass the bridge below before realising
we needed to cross it, so we backtracked a small distance and crossed over.

Now we am walking by Wigboro Wick Farm and pass some lakes. The one below was full of ducklings, Spring is almost here!

We walk up another small stretch of road before taking another footpath across more farmland.

Now we are on the path leading into St Osyth.

Mill Dam Lake

Mill Dam is the name of the lake created by the historic impoundment of St Osyth Creek to power the corn mill at St Osyth.

Curve Wake Park is a water-sports facility catering for wakeboarding, paddle boarding, ringo rides and kayaking that opened in 2017.

We cross the road from the Footpath over to St Osyth Priory.

St Osyth's Abbey (originally and still commonly known as St Osyth's Priory) was a house of Augustinian canons in the parish of St Osyth (then named Chich) in Essex, England in use from the 12th to 16th centuries. Founded by Richard de Belmeis, Bishop of London, c. 1121, it became one of the largest monasteries in Essex. It was dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul as well as St Osyth (Osith), a royal saint and virgin martyr. Bishop Richard obtained the arm bone of St Osyth from Aylesbury for the monastic church and granted the canons the parish church of St Osyth.

The monastery began as a priory, possibly a daughter house of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. The first prior of St Osyth's was William de Corbeil, who was elected archbishop of Canterbury in 1123 and who crowned King Stephen in 1135.

In Gesta pontificum Anglorum, William of Malmesbury spoke in praise of the piety and learning of the canons at St Osyth's in the twelfth century. One of the second generation of canons there was William de Vere, later bishop of Hereford, who wrote a Latin Life of St Osyth, in which he mentions that his mother Adeliza, daughter of Gilbert fitz Richard of Clare, had been a corrodian at the abbey for twenty years of her widowhood.

A charter of King Henry II confirmed the right of the canons of St Osyth's to elect their abbot and to hold a market every Sunday at Chich in the later 12th century.

During the Suppression of the Monasteries, the religious group was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1539, at which time there were a prior and sixteen canons. The king granted it to his minister Thomas Cromwell, but on his fall from favor, the abbey and its estates were returned to crown possession. In the reign of King Edward VI they were sold to Sir Thomas Darcy for just under £400. The gatehouse, dating from the late 15th century, is the most significant remnant of the original monastic structures still standing. The exterior is a fine example of decorative flint work. It stood in for St Anselm's theological college in the BBC's miniseries adaptation of P. D. James' Death in Holy Orders in 2003.

We walk up into the village.

St Osyth is named after Osgyth, a 7th-century saint and princess. The name is locally pronounced "Toosey". St Osyth is claimed to be the driest recorded place in the United Kingdom.

Before being renamed to commemorate St Osyth, the village was called Chich (also spelt Chiche or Chick), from an Old English word meaning "bend", in reference to St Osyth Creek. Later, the manor of Chich (now St Osyth) in Essex was assumed as part of his royal demesne by the Danish King Canute, who granted it to Earl Godwin, and by him it was given to Christ Church, Canterbury. At the Conquest it was transferred to the Bishopric of London.

Thomas Darcy, the first Baron Darcy of Chiche was buried in St Osyth.

St Osyth was the subject of an episode of Channel 4's Time Team programme, "Lost Centuries of St Osyth", (series 12 episode 9, first broadcast in February 2005). The programme sought to uncover the early origins of the village, which was presumed to have grown up about the same time as the Priory, in the 12th century. Many of the investigations around the current village centre found little evidence of settlement earlier than the 14th century; it appeared that the early village centre lay some way off, between the Priory and the river.

The village was a focus for the St Osyth witch persecutions in the 16th and 17th centuries. A total of ten local women were hanged as a result. In 1921 the skeletons of two women were discovered in the garden of a house in the village. One was claimed to be the witch Ursley Kempe, who was the first to be prosecuted. The skeletons became a local tourist attraction.

St Osyth Priory

Legend has it that Saint Osyth, Osgyth or Ositha was a young lady involved in various fantastical events during her lifetime (c. 700). The legends include:

A young Osyth drowned in a stream, but was revived by nuns from the local convent praying for her for three days.

Osyth was executed by beheading; where she fell a spring issued forth from the ground. She picked up her head and walked to the door of the nunnery, where she knocked three times on the door before collapsing.

Osyth's ghost is said to walk along the priory walls carrying her head one night each year.

In the Napoleonic Wars two Martello Towers were built on the peninsula between the Colne Estuary and Brightlingsea Creek. One survives at Stone Point and is now the East Essex Aviation Museum. The peninsula was cordoned off and used by the Navy and Army in both world wars. Between 1942 and 1944 it was a large, minor landing-craft training base called HMS Helder. No 1 Martello Tower was a signal station and minefield control point, linked to the Navy at Brightlingsea.

We stopped in at St Peter and St Paul Church in the village.

The church is Norman built with many later added additions.

We popped inside and asked the vicar if it was okay for a look about, she said its fine but she's getting the church ready for a service.

Just as we were leaving a load of people starting to come in with flowers and it was clearly a funeral getting ready to start. I felt rather awkward standing at the doorway as they all walked in!

I walked down Spring road which later becomes Beach Road.

Now after a not so pleasant 2.2 miles of road walking I walk through Hutleys Caravan Park and back along the wall to Jaywick.

Ben enjoys a paddle in the sea after a tiring 9 mile walk for the pair of us. The longest walk I've done so far after injuring my ankle two months ago.

A pleasant walk and now the drive home to a wet Romford!