Brightlingsea

History

Brightlingsea sits on a promontory surrounded by the River Colne and its associated marshes and creeks (it was an island until the 16th century), and was settled from an early date. In 1995, an Early Neolithic pot, dated 4000 to 3100 BC, was found in a D-shaped enclosure with a ditch on a farm near Brightlingsea. Other early remains in the area date from the Bronze Age, Roman and Saxon periods. The place-name ‘Brightlingsea’ is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as Brictriceseia. It appears as Brichtricheseye in the Red Book of the Exchequer in 1212, as Brihtlenggesseya in the Pipe rolls in 1230, and as Brychtlingeseye in the charter rolls in 1253. The name means Brihtric’s island or Beorhtric's island. (See Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, p. 65.) In the Domesday Book of 1086, the population of Brightlingsea was given as 24 villagers, 26 smallholders and 5 slaves. The Lord of the manor had been King Harold Godwinson, but the title had passed to King William I. The medieval town grew up around two centres: the first around the parish church and the second close to the shore where a port had developed. Trade was in oysters, fish, and copperas – a green pigment of iron (II) sulphate used locally in brick production. The Cinque Ports were a confederation of the five most important ports on the coast of the English Channel. They had obligations to provide ships and men to fight for the king in times of war for which they were compensated by lucrative exemptions from taxation. All of the Cinque Ports acquired limbs or subsidiary ports that would ease the burden of their wartime obligations and share the benefits of their privileges. Brightlingsea became a limb of the head port of Sandwich, and is the…