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The Industrious East
Essex's former mills and factories jostle uneasily with jettied medieval buildings in our towns and villages. For an unusual day out, vestiges of Essex's exciting working past await your discovery.
From the medieval period through to the twentieth century, Essex towns and villages hummed with industrial activity. Many industrial buildings still remain in the landscape. Beside our many rivers and streams, traditional Essex water mills and maltings have evolved a new life as attractive pubs, restaurants and prestigious homes. But our heritage of the Industrial Revolution is a different matter.
The Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey is Essex's largest industrial heritage site and one of the most important in the UK. Today you can explore a landscape kept secret for 200 years. A former Ministry of Defence property, the Royal Gunpowder Mills are set in a huge natural landscape, an island in the River Lea. It was here that successive Governments produced gunpowder for Britain's wars. Here too, they developed explosives for Barnes Wallis' WW2 Bouncing Bomb. Exhibitions and historic buildings tell the complete story. Interpretation boards and guided tours lead you around the huge site. Check the website for details of the many re-enactment events held here, or enjoy a nature walk amongst the deer on one of the quiet days.
Everyone living today has been touched in some way by industry. Roads, railways or communications, the products of engineering dominate our lives. Things we take for granted, like drinking water, electricity and fashion colours, are the result of new technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. Although Essex was not a heartland of the Industrial Revolution many exciting things happened here and can still be experienced by visiting our industrial museums.
Does the history of fashion interest you? Braintree was once a thriving industrial town and major silk weaving centre from the early nineteenth century. The driving force for change was the Courtauld family, who rose to prominence to create one of Britain's most important companies. Braintree District Museum tells the story of how Courtaulds adopted Rayon, the first artificial silk and turned it into Courtelle, one of the first fashion textiles. Just around the corner from the Museum is Braintree's hidden gem, the Warner Textile Archive, where the story of silk begins. Its 80,000 display items, including Chinese silk and patterns, amount to one of the largest collections outside the V&A.
Each town and village has stories to tell about human perseverance and successful lives. From water mills to huge modern factories, there is a heritage of working lives that touches each and every one of us. Industrial heritage is not just for experts. It is for every family to explore to find out about family members, their work places and tales of heroism. It is more representative of our common tradition than other types of heritage like castles and abbeys and it is closer to us in time too. Visit the 'Working Lives in the East of England' Exhibition at the East Anglian Railway Museum throughout December 2009 and January 2010 and experience the variety of industrial life and see Essex as it used to be.
Discover it for yourself by visiting our other Essex industrial museums telling the complete story and find out how the world has changed.
