Colchester ( ) is a
city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
in
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
, in the
East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011.
The
demonym is Colcestrian.
Colchester occupies the site of
Camulodunum
Camulodunum (; la, ), the Ancient Roman name for what is now Colchester in Essex, was an important castrum and city in Roman Britain, and the first capital of the province. A temporary "strapline" in the 1960s identifying it as the "oldest re ...
, the first
major city
The United Nations uses three definitions for what constitutes a city, as not all cities in all jurisdictions are classified using the same criteria. Cities may be defined as the cities proper, the extent of their urban area, or their metropo ...
in
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the period in classical antiquity when large parts of the island of Great Britain were under occupation by the Roman Empire. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. During that time, the territory conquered wa ...
and its first capital. Colchester therefore claims to be Britain's first city.
It has been an important military base since the Roman era, with
Colchester Garrison
Colchester Garrison is a major garrison located in Colchester in the county of Essex, Eastern England. It has been an important military base since the Roman era. The first permanent military garrison in Colchester was established by Legio XX ...
currently housing the
16th Air Assault Brigade.
Situated on the
River Colne, Colchester is northeast of London. The city is connected to London by the
A12 road This is a list of roads designated A12. Entries are sorted in alphabetical order by country.
* A012 road (Argentina), a road around the city of Rosario
* A12 motorway (Austria), a road connecting Kufstein and the German Autobahn A 93 to Landec ...
and the
Great Eastern Main Line railway. Colchester is less than from
London Stansted Airport
London Stansted Airport is a tertiary international airport serving London, England, United Kingdom. It is located near Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, England, northeast of Central London.
London Stansted serves over 160 destinations ac ...
and from the
port of Harwich.
Attractions in and around the city include
Colchester United Football Club
Colchester United Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of Colchester, Essex, England. The team competes in , the fourth tier of the English football league system.
Founded in 1937, the club spent its earl ...
,
Colchester Zoo
Colchester Zoo is a zoological garden situated near Colchester, England. The zoo opened in 1963 and celebrated its 50th anniversary on 2 June 2013. It is home to many rare and endangered species, including big cats, primates and birds as well as ...
, and several art galleries.
Colchester Castle
Colchester Castle is a Norman castle in Colchester, Essex, England, dating from the second half of the eleventh century. The keep of the castle is mostly intact and is the largest example of its kind anywhere in Europe, due to its being bui ...
was constructed in the eleventh century on earlier Roman foundations; it now contains a museum. The main campus of the
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...
is located just outside the city. Local government is the responsibility of the
City of Colchester and
Essex County Council
Essex County Council is the county council that governs the non-metropolitan county of Essex in England. It has 75 councillors, elected from 70 divisions, and is currently controlled by the Conservative Party. The council meets at County Hall ...
.
Name
There are several theories about the origin of the name ''Colchester''. Some contend that is derived from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
words ''
colonia'' (referring to a type of
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
settlement with rights equivalent to those of Roman citizens, one of which was believed to have been founded in the vicinity of Colchester) and ''
castra'', meaning ''fortifications'' (referring to the city's walls, the oldest in Britain).
[Crummy, Philip (1997) City of Victory; the story of Colchester – Britain's first Roman town. Published by Colchester Archaeological Trust ()][Ashdown-Hill, John (2009). Mediaeval Colchester's Lost Landmarks. Published by The Breedon Books Publishing Company Limited. ()] The earliest forms of the name Colchester are ''Colenceaster'' and ''Colneceastre'' from the 10th century, with the modern spelling of ''Colchester'' being found in the 15th century.
In this way of interpreting the name, the
River Colne which runs through the city takes its name from ''Colonia'' as well.
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
(German ''Köln'') also gained its name from a similar etymology (from its Roman name
Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium
Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium was the Roman colony in the Rhineland from which the city of Cologne, now in Germany, developed.
It was usually called ''Colonia'' (colony) and was the capital of the Roman province of Germania Inferior and t ...
).
Other etymologists are confident that the Colne's name is of Celtic (pre-Roman) origin, sharing its origin with several other rivers Colne or Clun around Britain, and that Colchester is derived from ''Colne'' and ''Castra''.
Ekwall went as far as to say "it has often been held that Colchester contains as first element
atin''colonia'' ... this derivation is ruled out of court by the fact that Colne is the name of several old villages situated a good many miles from Colchester and on the Colne. The identification of Colonia with Colchester is doubtful."
[Eilert Ekwall (1928). English River-names. Published by Oxford at the Clarendon Press. ()]
The popular association of the name with
King Coel has no academic merit.
History
Prehistory
The gravel hill upon which Colchester is built was formed in the
Middle Pleistocene
The Chibanian, widely known by its previous designation of Middle Pleistocene, is an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. Th ...
period, and was shaped into a
terrace
Terrace may refer to:
Landforms and construction
* Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river
* Terrace, a street suffix
* Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk an ...
between the
Anglian glaciation
The Anglian Stage is the name used in the British Isles for a middle Pleistocene glaciation. It precedes the Hoxnian Stage and follows the Cromerian Stage in the British Isles. The Anglian Stage is correlated to Marine Isotope Stage 12 (MIS 12), ...
and the
Ipswichian glaciation
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate be ...
by an ancient precursor to the
River Colne.
[Crummy, Philip (1992) Colchester Archaeological Report 6: Excavations at Culver Street, the Gilberd School, and other sites in Colchester 1971–85. Published by Colchester Archaeological Trust ()] From these deposits beneath the city have been found
Palaeolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος '' lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone to ...
flint tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
s, including at least six
Acheulian handaxes
A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a Prehistory, prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually f ...
.
Further flint tools made by
hunter gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle (sociology), lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants bu ...
s living in the Colne Valley during the
Mesolithic have been discovered, including a
tranchet axe from Middlewick.
In the 1980s an archaeological inventory showed that over 800 shards of pottery from the
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...
,
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
and early
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
have been found within Colchester, along with many examples of
worked flint.
This included a pit found at Culver Street containing a ritually placed Neolithic
grooved ware
Grooved ware is the name given to a pottery style of the British Neolithic. Its manufacturers are sometimes known as the Grooved ware people. Unlike the later Beaker ware, Grooved culture was not an import from the continent but seems to have de ...
pot,
as well as find spots containing later
Deverel-Rimbury bucket urns.
Colchester is surrounded by Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments that pre-date the town, including a Neolithic
henge
There are three related types of Neolithic earthwork that are all sometimes loosely called henges. The essential characteristic of all three is that they feature a ring-shaped bank and ditch, with the ditch inside the bank. Because the internal ...
at
Tendring
Tendring is a village and civil parish in Essex. It gives its name to the Tendring District and before that the Tendring Hundred. Its name was given to the larger groupings because it was at the centre, not because it was larger than the other ...
, large
Bronze Age barrow cemeteries at
Dedham and
Langham, and a larger example at
Brightlingsea
Brightlingsea is a coastal town and an electoral ward in the Tendring district of Essex, England. It is situated between Colchester and Clacton-on-Sea, at the mouth of the River Colne, on Brightlingsea Creek. At the 2011 Census, it had a pop ...
consisting of a cluster of 22 barrows.
Celtic origins
Colchester is said to be the
oldest recorded town in Britain on the grounds that it was mentioned by
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...
, who died in AD 79, although the Celtic name of the town, ''Camulodunon'' appears on coins minted by tribal chieftain
Tasciovanus
Tasciovanus (died c. 9 AD) was a historical king of the Catuvellauni tribe before the Roman conquest of Britain.
History
Tasciovanus is known only through numismatic evidence. He appears to have become king of the Catuvellauni c. 20 BC, ruling ...
in the period 2010 BC.
Before the Roman conquest of Britain it was already a centre of power for
Cunobelin
Cunobeline (or Cunobelin, from Latin , derived from Common Brittonic ''*Cunobelinos'' "Strong as a Dog", "Strong Dog") was a king in Ancient Britain, pre-Roman Britain from about AD 9 until about AD 40.Malcolm Todd (2004)"Cunobelinus _known_to_Shakespeare_as_Cymbeline">ymbeline/n_...
_known_to_Shakespeare_as_Cymbeline_king_of_the_Catuvellauni.html" ;"title="Cymbeline.html" ;"title="ymbeline/n ...