Wivenhoe Landscapes Remembered: From a Working River to Romanticized Nature

Abstract

“The Essex shoreline is especially memorable for its obstinate refusal to conform to conventional notions of what is beautiful or picturesque,” write Jason Orton and Ken Worpole in introducing their recent book, 350 Miles: An Essex Journey (2007), vividly illustrated by stark photographs of oozing mud; flat, dyke-fringed fields; and wrecked buildings and piers. Nevertheless, they declare, “This landscape is singularly rich in history, and full of layered meanings and visual pleasures to those who give it the time and attention it deserves.”¹ And for Essex University biologist Jules Pretty, who has walked the whole East Anglian coast for his 2011 book, This Luminous Coast, right along the coastline there is a constant tug between the beauty of nature and wildness on the one hand, and human folly, which is leading to climatic change on the other: for “this is a coast about to be lost.” Nowhere is this more obvious than along the Essex coast, with its succession of derelict abandoned industries. Yet historically, this is precisely what makes it fascinating.² We agree. But we want to suggest in this interpretation of memories from the north Essex village of Wivenhoe, on the banks of the Colne estuary, that here at least the last layer of meaning includes a revival of romantic attitudes to landscape, and, for some, even a touch of the sublime.