Transcribed from the 1893 Edmund Durrant & Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org Some of Our East Coast Towns. * * * * * BY J. EWING RITCHIE (CHRISTOPHER CRAYON.) _Author of_ “_East Anglia_” _&c._ [Picture: Decorative graphic] Chelmsford. EDMUND DURRANT & CO. London: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD. 1893. * * * * * _NOTE_. _With one exception and some few additions these articles have appeared in the_ “_Christian World_.” * * * * * CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE. I. ONE OF OUR YOUNG BOROUGHS (CHELMSFORD) 1 II. IN AN ANCIENT CITY (COLCHESTER) 6 III. A QUIET SUFFOLK TOWN (HADLEIGH) 15 IV. A GRAND MEDIÆVAL TOWN (BURY ST. EDMUNDS) 21 V. IPSWICH: THE PRIDE OF THE ORWELL 28 VI. LIVING NORWICH 36 VII. A DAY AT LYNN 42 VIII. FRAMLINGHAM AND ITS CASTLE 48 IX. SUDBURY 52 X. INTERNATIONAL HAVERHILL 58 XI. THE OLDEST ESSEX BOROUGH (MALDON) 63 I. ONE OF OUR YOUNG BOROUGHS. CHELMSFORD, one of the youngest of the Essex Boroughs, and almost a suburb of Greater London by means of the Great Eastern Railway, was, when I first knew it, a dignified county town, the leading people of which considered a second post from London as a daily nuisance, and had no taste for what is practically too near the rush and roar of modern life. The old stage-coaches stopped and changed horses at quaint old hotels, which have long disappeared. Now, as you drop down from the railway station, past the Quakers’ chapel on one side, and the big brewery on the other, all is modern, and except the church which stands on your left, there is little left to recall the past. In the square, opposite the Shire Hall, there is a modern statue which recalls to memory Chief Justice Tindal, who, born in 1776, at a house called Coval Hall, was educated at the Chelmsford Grammar School, and died at Folkestone, in 1846. The statue is erected on the site of an ancient conduit, which stood long upon the spot, with a Latin inscription which few Essex people cared to read. Not far off is the Corn Exchange, which, what time corn was a commodity worth dealing in, was on Fridays as busy as Mark Lane itself.