A bit of posh: Burnham on Crouch

Bordered by the Blackwater in the north, the Dengie pouts across the North Sea at the Netherlands. Surrounded by swirling muddy waters it’s the home to one of the oldest structures and one of the newest typologies. St Peter on the Wall, an austere chapel founded by St Cedd thirteen hundred years ago has a strange neighbour. Bradwell nuclear power station is slowly being decommissioned, the huge twin blocks having given fifty years of navigational assistance where distinctions between land and sea aren’t always clear. Out to the east, the ebb exposes the underwear of Essex as it uncovers the Buxey Sands. Getting over these and on up the Crouch to Burnham can be as trying as negotiating the Sunday train timetable. Get it right and it’s plain sailing, but miss the connection and it’s the tidal equivalent of a replacement bus service to Billericay. 

However you get there, it has a handsome quayside for an afternoon stroll. A traffic-free brick channel promenades in and out as needed along a mile or two of river, navigating a jumbled mix of domestic, commercial and yachty. Along the prettiest bit, three pubs are within a peanut’s throw of each other, unlike the yacht clubs which maintain dignified separation. The boatyard interrupts both path and view, but, this being Burnham, a couple of heritage-coloured hangars hide the messy process of boat repair. It’s said that ports rot ships and men, and in the adjacent mud berths you can see the results. But it’s still all very picturesque. 

You’re never far from the river in Burnham, in fact before the defences were built, serious flooding brought it too close a few times, but step back a cottage depth from the quay and the high street opens up wide enough for a market, which it hasn’t had for centuries. There’s something very Dickensian about it, a mish mash of clapboard, rich red brick and a bit of stucco, and nothing over three stories except the octagonal clock tower topped with a fourth story which wouldn’t look out of place on the back of an elephant. Bolted to schoolhouse rather than church and straddling the pavement, it was erected to the memory of Laban Sweeting, philanthropist and oyster merchant. On cold snowy nights, you can imagine long frocked and bonneted carol singers sheltering underneath. 

In 1845 the tide pushed Darwin’s Beagle up the Crouch where it served the Customs and Excise men as a floating police station before being lost to an unmarked watery grave. It was moored roughly where the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club now stands, the first building you’ll see after negotiating the lower stretches. Wide cantilevered terraces jut confidently over the river from one of the few home-grown examples of the Internationalist Style. The angle of its bright blue crane exactly matches the angle of the glazing following the stairs in the end wall. Nose very much in the air, I’d say.