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Excellent Essex
IN PRAISE OF ENGLAND'S MOST MISUNDERSTOOD COUNTY
It's time we talked about Essex.
It's the county everyone's heard of; the place few of us know. Gillian Darley takes us on a vivid, personal tour, from the seaside piers to the empty marshes and the New Town tower blocks, revealing a landscape and a story like no other.
Alongside Essex Man and TOWIE, there's the Essex that nurtured the first Puritan settlers in America, welcomed refugees from Europe, fugitives from the underworld and bombed-out East Enders. Where dreamers and makers, punk poets, anarchist sects and inventors all found inspiration.
A Colchester nurseryman was the first to trade with a secretive Eastern Kingdom. Braintree's only earthquake inspired an innovative building system. In Epping, a spat over firewood led to an historic victory for the common people. In Essex, the clash between city and countryside, capital and province, created a shower of sparks that ultimately set the world on fire.
Drawing on everything from ancient maps to reality tv, EXCELLENT ESSEX is no guide book, but a wonderful guide to England's most misunderstood county.
It's time we talked about Essex.
It's the county everyone's heard of; the place few of us know. Gillian Darley takes us on a vivid, personal tour, from the seaside piers to the empty marshes and the New Town tower blocks, revealing a landscape and a story like no other.
Alongside Essex Man and TOWIE, there's the Essex that nurtured the first Puritan settlers in America, welcomed refugees from Europe, fugitives from the underworld and bombed-out East Enders. Where dreamers and makers, punk poets, anarchist sects and inventors all found inspiration.
A Colchester nurseryman was the first to trade with a secretive Eastern Kingdom. Braintree's only earthquake inspired an innovative building system. In Epping, a spat over firewood led to an historic victory for the common people. In Essex, the clash between city and countryside, capital and province, created a shower of sparks that ultimately set the world on fire.
Drawing on everything from ancient maps to reality tv, EXCELLENT ESSEX is no guide book, but a wonderful guide to England's most misunderstood county.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
342 pages, Hardcover
First published September 4, 2019
11 people are currently reading
79 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 28, 2020
The cover and title might give the impression this is a light-hearted weekend exploration book. The writing style - and anyone familiar with Darley's work - would lead us to expect something more serious and, indeed, the book is well-written and full of history and insight. But it it's much more than a straightforward history. Like Iain Sinclair without the grumpy voice, it's immersive and brings in references from unexpected places. Thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating.
April 13, 2020
I must declare an interest that I am born and bred in Essex. The book is an eclectic mix of history, geography, art and literature and more. It’s fascinating and draws a fair picture of what is perhaps the most maligned English county. Gillian Darley writes elegantly and yet lightly about pretty well every aspect of the county with a sharp pen. Taking my bias into account, I thoroughly enjoyed it - indeed I would wish it longer.
February 2, 2022
Gillian Darley herself says "One thing leads to another, unlikely connections emerge. That's the way my world goes round.". This book is almost the perfect embodiment of that worldview! Since we moved to Essex, I've loved reading books about the Estuary (thanks @cacrampton ), Tides, and now this compendium of tales, curios, history and reminiscences about a county that - at best - gets a bit of a hard time in the conventional mainstream media view of the UK. But as Darley points out through swathes of stories of industry, innovation, natural habitat, entrepreneurialism, resilience, good nature, tall tales, "Essex is a place of enormous, divisive contrasts, one where the electrifying elements of capital and country create intense energy, a mood of dynamism and optimism". I couldn't agree more. Most folks who're from here can't leave fast enough, or they stick around with good humoured self-mockery as they go about their business. I speak from recent personal experience of the beauty of the landscape and the incredible efforts to live alongside nature in a place which is often the recipient of London's cast-offs and waste. And of the complexities of the people, the cross sections of society you get around here. This book is great - if slightly overwhelming! It's like arriving in a gorgeous local museum and meeting the curator, so you get to experience every object of the collection exactly how it should be viewed. Good for @gmdarley, and good for Essex. #excellentessex #guehennoreads #booksofinstagram #booksof2022
January 19, 2023
Excellent Essex Gillian Darley
I was just five pages into the introduction of Excellent Essex when I read Gillian Darley's description of Jaywick being near to Southend On Sea. I instantly thought here we go, someone who isn't from Essex or hasn't lived here writing what they think the county is all about. There's no way the two places are near each other either as the crow flies or cross country. I should know. I lived in Shoeburyness for thirty five years and for the past two have lived about six miles north east of Jaywick. I find later on that the author has lived in Essex! So how is 58.9 miles or 1 hour 42 minutes away "nearby"?
Having got to know well the county and its people, working for, first Essex Radio, and then BBC Essex for a total of thirty five years, it became apparent to me that Essex, like so many other administratively created, several times altered, geographical areas, is not a single entity. By that I mean that most people in North Essex have little to do with South Essex. The people of Braintree, Halstead, Colchester and Clacton rarely go south of Chelmsford unless it's down the A12 or to Southend Airport and vice versa. Even in these days of performance cars eating miles within minutes, places like Colchester and Frinton on Sea are not on the antennae of folks from Grays, Basildon or Southend. In fact residents in Colchester and Tendring look towards Ipswich often for shopping and other pursuits while residents of areas like Grays and Brentwood head to London for entertainment and to Lakeside or Bluewater for shopping.
These facts are missing from Excellent Essex. This author seems to think that Essex is one big together community. Such an image is admirable but sadly wrong. I reckon an average resident of South Essex would be hard pushed to tell you where Thaxted is, or similarly, ask an average north Essex resident where the Bata shoe factory once was, and they'd look blank.
I always remember the former chief executive of West Ham United telling me that the vast majority of season ticket holders live in Essex. I reckon Ipswich Town would say something similar. The former reflects the fathers and grandfathers having come to Essex from east London and supporting the same team in the family blood, and both reflect a better standard of football to be seen at the London Stadium and Portman Road than at Roots Hall or the Community Stadium.
I did persevere with Excellent Essex and I'm so glad I did, as, otherwise, it's about the best, most informative, fact filled and easy to read book about Essex I've encountered.
The author is particularly skilled at weaving stories and facts within themes in which she has constructed her book, rather than in a strict chronological chapter by chapter. I wonder how much more she has left out of what is an ample volume.
Apart from that opening failing, Gillian Darley has done her homework. Her description of the Roman occupation and their battle with Boadicea are a delight to read and she has a good understanding of what I've always regarded as a characteristic of Essex people, particularly south Essex people, though it's likely to be found elsewhere I'm sure - that entrepreneurial spirit. Whether it's the plotlanders who left bombed out London to build their own homes in Langdon Hills or Jaywick, the council house tenants who bought their homes, transformed them including changing the front doors and sold on for big profits, or the 15 year old greengrocer's daughter who set off for a life in the city and was a millionaire by 30, Gillian Darley acknowledges the lives made good and the self made success of Essex folk. However, quite rightly, she draws an interesting contrast between their much publicised success stories with those struggling to get by, describing the film Fish Tank as an illustration of life as "a single parent family living in poor conditions." Alongside Towie, and just down the road from Brentwood, the actress in the film was recruited from "Tilbury, the bleakest output of the docks." It is, she writes, "fiction well rooted in sobering reality."
There is so much in this book about Essex I didn't know.
Here is just a smattering of facts in a book from which you could derive a whole quiz night's questions about Essex -
• The author Daniel Defoe lived in Chadwell Marsh and then Colchester and owned tile and brick works
• The US state of Georgia was founded by a man from Cranham which was in Essex when he was alive
• Former Cabinet minister Amber Rudd was once a schoolgirl at New Hall near Chelmsford
• Claims that Stansted Airport's third runway has already been built and is hidden by undergrowth and soil
• Lambs used to be bought at Smithfield market, fed on the Essex saltings and then sold back in London at "very good advantage"
• The M25 was built under Bell Common after the members of Epping Foresters Cricket Club refused to allow their pitch to be dug away. There is "a distance of only 18 inches between the tunnel roof and the green above."
• After Harlow, Ongar was planned to be the site of a new town but Basildon was chosen instead
• Eight double deckers carrying three hundred mothers and children evacuated from the blitz in London arrived in Tolleshunt D'Arcy in world war two including "nineteen family members who refused to be parted"
• The once massive milk producer Lord Rayleigh's Dairies was owned by the Strutt family
• The boundary between Butlin's holiday camp in Clacton and the town centre was kept transparent to allow "the large boating lake there for all to see what a good time was being had"
• Five year old John Wilkinson remembers looking out of the back window of his house and rather than seeing fields, saw sea. His house was on Canvey Island. The day was January 31st 1953. John Wilkinson is better known as guitarist Wilko Johnson
• As agricultural depression hit Essex in the early 1900's, Daisy, Countess of Warwick, who lived at Little Easton, spent more than a million pounds in today's money helping agricultural workers
• The historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, one of five adopted children by a Peculiar People couple at Thundersley, remembers his father "inserting biblical tracts into his workers' weekly pay packets."
I congratulate Gillian Darley on having written a fine book about Essex. However rather than re-defining Essex people from the much maligned opinion some may have of them, what she does do is introduce the reader to the diverse, rich vein of characters that have lived in Essex through history and made the county what it is today. In doing so, she has, maybe unwittingly, galvanised in my mind the feeling I always had that you can't generalise about Essex people. They are not a single entity - they are varied and diverse and so different from the media's portrayal of them.
I'll end with a quiz question gleaned from Gillian Darley's excellent book. Who wrote in the '50's : " Southend is a cheaper Brighton. Clacton a cheaper Worthing and Dovercourt a cheaper Bournemouth."
I was just five pages into the introduction of Excellent Essex when I read Gillian Darley's description of Jaywick being near to Southend On Sea. I instantly thought here we go, someone who isn't from Essex or hasn't lived here writing what they think the county is all about. There's no way the two places are near each other either as the crow flies or cross country. I should know. I lived in Shoeburyness for thirty five years and for the past two have lived about six miles north east of Jaywick. I find later on that the author has lived in Essex! So how is 58.9 miles or 1 hour 42 minutes away "nearby"?
Having got to know well the county and its people, working for, first Essex Radio, and then BBC Essex for a total of thirty five years, it became apparent to me that Essex, like so many other administratively created, several times altered, geographical areas, is not a single entity. By that I mean that most people in North Essex have little to do with South Essex. The people of Braintree, Halstead, Colchester and Clacton rarely go south of Chelmsford unless it's down the A12 or to Southend Airport and vice versa. Even in these days of performance cars eating miles within minutes, places like Colchester and Frinton on Sea are not on the antennae of folks from Grays, Basildon or Southend. In fact residents in Colchester and Tendring look towards Ipswich often for shopping and other pursuits while residents of areas like Grays and Brentwood head to London for entertainment and to Lakeside or Bluewater for shopping.
These facts are missing from Excellent Essex. This author seems to think that Essex is one big together community. Such an image is admirable but sadly wrong. I reckon an average resident of South Essex would be hard pushed to tell you where Thaxted is, or similarly, ask an average north Essex resident where the Bata shoe factory once was, and they'd look blank.
I always remember the former chief executive of West Ham United telling me that the vast majority of season ticket holders live in Essex. I reckon Ipswich Town would say something similar. The former reflects the fathers and grandfathers having come to Essex from east London and supporting the same team in the family blood, and both reflect a better standard of football to be seen at the London Stadium and Portman Road than at Roots Hall or the Community Stadium.
I did persevere with Excellent Essex and I'm so glad I did, as, otherwise, it's about the best, most informative, fact filled and easy to read book about Essex I've encountered.
The author is particularly skilled at weaving stories and facts within themes in which she has constructed her book, rather than in a strict chronological chapter by chapter. I wonder how much more she has left out of what is an ample volume.
Apart from that opening failing, Gillian Darley has done her homework. Her description of the Roman occupation and their battle with Boadicea are a delight to read and she has a good understanding of what I've always regarded as a characteristic of Essex people, particularly south Essex people, though it's likely to be found elsewhere I'm sure - that entrepreneurial spirit. Whether it's the plotlanders who left bombed out London to build their own homes in Langdon Hills or Jaywick, the council house tenants who bought their homes, transformed them including changing the front doors and sold on for big profits, or the 15 year old greengrocer's daughter who set off for a life in the city and was a millionaire by 30, Gillian Darley acknowledges the lives made good and the self made success of Essex folk. However, quite rightly, she draws an interesting contrast between their much publicised success stories with those struggling to get by, describing the film Fish Tank as an illustration of life as "a single parent family living in poor conditions." Alongside Towie, and just down the road from Brentwood, the actress in the film was recruited from "Tilbury, the bleakest output of the docks." It is, she writes, "fiction well rooted in sobering reality."
There is so much in this book about Essex I didn't know.
Here is just a smattering of facts in a book from which you could derive a whole quiz night's questions about Essex -
• The author Daniel Defoe lived in Chadwell Marsh and then Colchester and owned tile and brick works
• The US state of Georgia was founded by a man from Cranham which was in Essex when he was alive
• Former Cabinet minister Amber Rudd was once a schoolgirl at New Hall near Chelmsford
• Claims that Stansted Airport's third runway has already been built and is hidden by undergrowth and soil
• Lambs used to be bought at Smithfield market, fed on the Essex saltings and then sold back in London at "very good advantage"
• The M25 was built under Bell Common after the members of Epping Foresters Cricket Club refused to allow their pitch to be dug away. There is "a distance of only 18 inches between the tunnel roof and the green above."
• After Harlow, Ongar was planned to be the site of a new town but Basildon was chosen instead
• Eight double deckers carrying three hundred mothers and children evacuated from the blitz in London arrived in Tolleshunt D'Arcy in world war two including "nineteen family members who refused to be parted"
• The once massive milk producer Lord Rayleigh's Dairies was owned by the Strutt family
• The boundary between Butlin's holiday camp in Clacton and the town centre was kept transparent to allow "the large boating lake there for all to see what a good time was being had"
• Five year old John Wilkinson remembers looking out of the back window of his house and rather than seeing fields, saw sea. His house was on Canvey Island. The day was January 31st 1953. John Wilkinson is better known as guitarist Wilko Johnson
• As agricultural depression hit Essex in the early 1900's, Daisy, Countess of Warwick, who lived at Little Easton, spent more than a million pounds in today's money helping agricultural workers
• The historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, one of five adopted children by a Peculiar People couple at Thundersley, remembers his father "inserting biblical tracts into his workers' weekly pay packets."
I congratulate Gillian Darley on having written a fine book about Essex. However rather than re-defining Essex people from the much maligned opinion some may have of them, what she does do is introduce the reader to the diverse, rich vein of characters that have lived in Essex through history and made the county what it is today. In doing so, she has, maybe unwittingly, galvanised in my mind the feeling I always had that you can't generalise about Essex people. They are not a single entity - they are varied and diverse and so different from the media's portrayal of them.
I'll end with a quiz question gleaned from Gillian Darley's excellent book. Who wrote in the '50's : " Southend is a cheaper Brighton. Clacton a cheaper Worthing and Dovercourt a cheaper Bournemouth."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 16, 2025
As an Essex dweller, I wanted from this book plenty of Ilford, where both my parents were born & bred, & plenty of Chelmsford, where I now live. But, thankfully, the book is more interesting than that, & I learned plenty.
I learned that Martello towers are misnamed, that Dorothy L. Sayers lived nearby (I should have known that), that Eric Ravilious didn't really like the Essex landscape, & that Springfield benefited from a wartime photographer taking pictures of typical village activity on the green. The latter is accompanied by a picture of soldiers; to the right, out of sight, stood the church - a sobering reminder of threat, war, continuity, &, not shown, one of the ways we try to assuage the difficulties of our human existence.
Gillian Darley was good on the Tolstoyans & other minority groups that have been popular in Essex, & I was reminded that I haven't knowingly seen any of the Peculiar People for many years now. I liked the short piece on Braintree & its industries, & surprisingly, the pieces on agriculture. She was strongest when she took up a theme that was illustrated by a particular endeavour, rather than when she appeared to use the text to scatter information that is easily available elsewhere. I guess it's hard to take an original stand on things like the witch craze when it's been done so many times before, but by contrast I felt the 'sect' chapter was very strong.
A couple of updates since the book was written: The Stansted 15 (mentioned in a footnote) who were convicted under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act (AMSA) 1990 had their convictions overturned on 29 January 2021. The Lord Chief Justice said they 'should not have been prosecuted for the extremely serious offence'. Quite right. And the Roman Catholic bishop, Thomas McMahon, who is name-checked for having commissioned the cathedral in Brentwood died on 24 November 2025. His Requiem Mass is taking place in the cathedral today.
I learned that Martello towers are misnamed, that Dorothy L. Sayers lived nearby (I should have known that), that Eric Ravilious didn't really like the Essex landscape, & that Springfield benefited from a wartime photographer taking pictures of typical village activity on the green. The latter is accompanied by a picture of soldiers; to the right, out of sight, stood the church - a sobering reminder of threat, war, continuity, &, not shown, one of the ways we try to assuage the difficulties of our human existence.
Gillian Darley was good on the Tolstoyans & other minority groups that have been popular in Essex, & I was reminded that I haven't knowingly seen any of the Peculiar People for many years now. I liked the short piece on Braintree & its industries, & surprisingly, the pieces on agriculture. She was strongest when she took up a theme that was illustrated by a particular endeavour, rather than when she appeared to use the text to scatter information that is easily available elsewhere. I guess it's hard to take an original stand on things like the witch craze when it's been done so many times before, but by contrast I felt the 'sect' chapter was very strong.
A couple of updates since the book was written: The Stansted 15 (mentioned in a footnote) who were convicted under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act (AMSA) 1990 had their convictions overturned on 29 January 2021. The Lord Chief Justice said they 'should not have been prosecuted for the extremely serious offence'. Quite right. And the Roman Catholic bishop, Thomas McMahon, who is name-checked for having commissioned the cathedral in Brentwood died on 24 November 2025. His Requiem Mass is taking place in the cathedral today.
February 25, 2020
As an Essex boy, I’ve long appreciated the delights of the county and recognized (like most other places) it has its horrors as well. It gets a bad (and lazy) rap in the media due to reality TV shows and it’s proximity to East London. Gillian Darley’s excellent and informative book sets the record straight and is packed full of accounts of familiar places and history/wry observations. A little too much on architecture and art (but that is her expertise) but some well told stories of Essex’s contribution to world history and civilization.
January 29, 2023
Nearly gave it a two but I did learn/look up many things along the way. This should have been so much better (and more personal), and a defence of Essex, but instead it was just a pile of information
March 3, 2020
Lovely combination of history, geography and social matters. Not all of it flowed somehow - felt a bit like a collection.
April 17, 2020
Fantastic read!
February 10, 2021
Interesting facts but not very well edited.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews