Jaywick in Essex has been in the news recently with the by-election in Clacton on Thursday. It began as a 1920s plotland development, and as recently as 1984 its huts and chalets were being held up as a “charming example of English vernacular makeshift architecture”. But now it’s the poster-child for anti-plotlanders and a handy source of filler stories for the Daily Mail on a slow news day as England’s “most deprived neighbourhood”. So how did it get to this?
Jaywick Sands was started as a new development by the sea front by Frank Stedman in 1928, with freehold plots of land sold off one by one to Londoners and Essex residents looking for holiday homes to use at weekends or in the summer. They plotlanders mostly put up wooden chalets and huts, often built by the families themselves. Looking at the early photographs it was quite dense from the start, compared to more spread out sites like the Humberston Fitties.
Before the war there was some hostility to the site from Clacton Council, and development of new plotland buildings across the country was largely halted by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. Along with other east coast sites, it received another blow from the North Sea flood of 1953 when 37 of the total UK death toll of 307 were in Jaywick.
During the 1950s and 1960s the Jaywick Ratepayers’ Association campaigned for Clacton Council to provide road maintenance and the water and sewerage services that other parts of the borough received in return for their rates. In tandem, Stedman’s original Jaywick Freeholders’ Association lobbied for better flood defences. During this period the demographics shifted from holiday and weekend occupation to residential use, with an increasing number of people retiring to Jaywick as a seaside area they had visited during their working life.
At the start of 1971, the council decided to eliminate the Brooklands and Grasslands areas of chalet development in Jaywick using its compulsory purchase powers. In the end, this move was blocked by an appeal to the Department of the Environment, whose inspector criticised the council’s failure to provide basic services. In 1975, a sympathetic councillor felt that the “Council were still sulking over the inquiry decision and don’t want to know about Jaywick”.
In their 1984 book “Arcadia for all”, Colin Ward and Dennis Hardy summarised outsiders views of the area:
Jaywick especially has been seized upon by architectural writers to illustrate, not the horrors of uncontrolled development, but the charm of an indigenous vernacular of makeshift design. Thus for the teachers of architecture at Oxford Polytechnic, it is an example of ‘structuring one’s own environment in defiance of external authority’ and for the architectural critic Sutherland Lyall, it represents ‘not shanty town jerry building but an indigenous British paradigm of the way twentieth-century “bricoleurs” respond directly to their exigent circumstances.’
So how did it become “Misery by the Sea” as the Daily Mail puts it?
The council played its part. The continuing hostility from the council placed the area under Article 4 directives requiring full planning permission for even minor alterations and improvements or even garden sheds. Rebuilding was prevented when decaying chalets were pulled down, or if one burnt down. The council appears to have objected to the idea of buildings that weren’t “proper” houses, but simultaneously dragged its heels over providing the proper roads and services that go with “proper” housing streets. Deliberately blighting an area has consequences for the future.
The economy had a role too. The wider recession in the early 1980s hit Jaywick particularly hard. Well in to the 1970s, Jaywick had been a seaside destination for day trips and holidays, with fairground rides and seafront shops and stalls. These businesses gradually ran down, and in 1983 the Butlin’s holiday camp, which had been a significant local employer, finally closed.
By the 1990s, Jaywick had a bad reputation. It had become the kind of place local taxi drivers were reluctant to take fares to, and people with Jaywick addresses didn’t get short-listed when going for jobs.
Gradually the freehold owners of the chalet plots sold up, or they or their families just abandoned the plots and forgot about them. Over time, more and more chalets fell into the hands of a small number of absentee landlords who let them out on short tenancies to people who could claim housing benefit and who came in from other areas. In 2011, the Guardian reported landlords were able to get £450 per month even for chalets in very poor condition.
How could this have been avoided? Many areas of conventional housing in cities arrive at the same situation, and this downward spiral can be hard or impossible to prevent. But it strikes me that when Jaywick was thriving, the people who visited or lived there owned their own chalets and plots, and had the freedom to improve them. As more control was exerted from outside, the worse the situation got. Treating people like children doesn’t lead to a thriving community. You want people to take pride in their neighbourhood, and the way to do that is let them have a sense of ownership. Part of that is having the ability to make choices to shape their environment. Living at the mercy of a “We Know Best” state bureaucracy or beholden to a slum landlord doesn’t do that.
Here is an aerial view of Jaywick’s Grasslands and Brooklands areas. (The full Google Maps version has Streetview pictures of all the roads so you can explore from eye level too):
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In 2012 Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope made a documentary, Jaywick Escapes, about the area which shows many of its problems and the community spirit which prevents some of the solutions (like mass demolition) proposed by the council over the years.
Postscript (23 October 2014): I had a chance to visit Jaywick after the by-election. There are some homes which are well looked after but the area, especially Brooklands, is genuinely run down and the Daily Mail pictures aren’t misleading. I saw some houses being rebuilt and it looks as if the process of cladding wooden chalets in pebble dash and replacing wood with concrete blocks and tiles is still ongoing. Here are a couple of pictures of houses that still betray their chalet origins:
Jaywick sands was always a lovely place.lspent a lot of my childhood there.made many friends .there was a church where we wold go to sunday school .a miniature railway.putting green.plenty of local shops.and a lovely safe beachfor children to play.my parents owned 2 plots 1as a 2 bedroom chalel the other large lawn.so many happy happy memories
Hi I was born in 1955 in jaywick grow and got a job at butlins now it is spoilt but have great memories
An excellent summation, thank you.
I do not know the whole story but have been a friend of Jaywick from afar, though never active in its society. As a child I was taken in the 1950s to the beach from my Walthamstow home and I think we may have weekended in the odd guest-house once or twice. It was and (still is) an ideal place for a day on the beach – buckets and spades – sand castles – swim at high tide and such like.
Then in the 1980s I moved, to live just on the Maldon side of Colchester. I worked in Criminal Justice and so took an interest aided by newspaper reports as my home is in the general local paper district.
I recall – maybe – what were once termed “ice cream wars” and folk having homes burned by territorial competitors. Still the beach was there as an attraction and also some residential type mobile homes/caravan sites and just behind the plotlands many neat front gardened homes including lots of bungalows, I always imagined occupied by retired folk. Occasionally business or leisure took my family to the general area and I would sometimes divert through Jaywick, just to take a look, on route to or from Clacton. We once bought a car from one of the tidy estate homes situated between the through B1027 road & Jaywick Sands itself.
Then, I had a friend, who escaped a troubled London life who settled in one of the privately rented chalets on the Brooklands Estate; named after the motor racing circuit in the Weybridge, Surrey area – another mid-20th century Londoner’s destination. I saw a bit more of Jaywick in the early 2000’s. Finally my demented mother-in-law was placed for respite care in a large residential establishment, presumably initially county council owned, which provided variable standards of care, so we stopped using it after one unhappy fortnight in about 2009/10, since which time I have not been back.
It is all very sad and unnecessary. I suspect that Jaywick Sands is really a victim of the local authority system that has county councils responsible for highways, education and social services and the district council responsible for housing and residential services and planning and the national government responsible for social security and health treatment with many overlaps and gaps. What we need is unilateral local authorities and the local authority having management responsibility for what are national services, like hospitals and true subsidiarity down to, in England, the parish council level. Parish councils or their equivalents need to be state wide throughout the UK, structured to encourage engagement from local people.
Sadly the current system seems to have hurt places like Jaywick – the actual area of real deprivation is very small, just the area that was originally known as Jaywick Sands, with as I have said a hinterland of neat estates.
I would live there if I had somewhere there bou sadly I don’t as would love to be by the sea
I missed my chance to buy one at £24,000 now you can’t get one under 50, oh well : (
Hi, as someone who once lef a crazy work orientated life in very long nights and weeks, but had a holiday van in Jaywick lane for 10 years before we finally sold our nice semi in nice north Romford to buy a big plot wit a then small bungalow on just 30 metres from the sea. Fate by way of work Insolvency made me and late wife rethink our futures so for us it was retire at 55 from the rat race and hello clean sea fresh air and sunshine in abundance on a cold wet January morning in 2004.. Now, 18 years later living alone plus a good solid 15 year old dog as my security alert er that was left for “Just 2 weeks Dad” by a daughter over a year ago bless her.. faithful to the last but waits for the postman to invade her hall way with letters barking like crazy.. LOL.. ITS HER HALL not mine eh..LOL.. Sadly my EX nurse wife passed quickly from aggressive brain cancer Christmas 2017 and fate saw my son very ill in the same Colchester Hospital was dying with sever SEPSIS a killer you never heard of before Covid.. He recovered and came home to his seafront place close to mine.. Then COVID struck many.. Touch wood Im oK still but due to my sons low body tolerance to virus caught full blown COVID so back to another 4 week induced coma at Colchester Hospital again 4 years after his SEPSIS.. 3 months later he came not to his but sleeps at mine on the odd occasion for the peace and quiet ? LOL.. he misses his old disabled Dad bless him. and feels “Safe” being near me.. Luckily I own 2 and half plots, have my front door in one road but a small fenced off grand kids garden plus a huge 26foot long car port I made for my previous Big Landrover making my newer smaller Landrover a bit lost but is out the weather and sunshine..Oh we had the once small bungalow extended and rebuilt, took the offer of free outside insulation upgrade finished in white polar stone chip new slimline heating rads in every room powered by a cheap to run high tec AIR SOURCED HEAT PUMP machine/ Its fantastic with new heating tank and expansion bottle does away with old fashioned loft tank..Been here 18 years here till I die..Thank you..OH forgot our roads had a 2 year £7 million pound upgrade making them the best in Tendring – proud of them also.
Spent time here when little.Shocked at how little change has happened
Really lovely beaches if I remember correctly.Sad to see this community so down as I am an Essex girl born and bred.Councils should be ashamed of themselves as nothing has changed.Feel disgusted really as it is the 21st century.Surely some funding could be found or is the money going on grandiose schemes elsewhere.Shame shame shame..Never make cutbacks an excuse as people are not stupid and often find out that any money has gone elsewhere.he
Hi Helen
I retired in Brooklands in 2004 and championed for change, it came. We have modern heating and 8 inch thick outside insulation and i have very deep loft plus underfloor insulation all done for free via grant money.. Our roads had a £7 MILLION pound up grade to new modern styled roads able to take full dustcarts weight now.. Its not all as rubbish TV shows portray believe me.. Would I move back to the nicer parts on north ROMFORD to a 3 bed semi like we once owned for 25 years >> NO not likely.. Living 30 metres from great beaches and sea fresh air just has no competitor..Love my Jaywick, have for 18 years now… Read my comments I posted above yours.. Thanks -Ian.B.