Stanway is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

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 G ...

, England near

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

and within Colchester Borough. 'Stanway' is an Anglo-Saxon name for the 'stone way' of the Roman road, now the A12. Stanway is about west of Colchester city centre on the B1408 (former A12), near the junction of the A12 and the A1124 at Eight Ash Green.

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 ...

The Stanway School The Stanway School is a mixed secondary school located in Stanway in the English county of Essex. The school was converted to academy status in May 2013, and used to be a community school under the direct control of Essex County Council. T ...

Graham Coxon Graham Leslie Coxon (born 12 March 1969) is an English musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and painter who came to prominence as a founding member of the rock band Blur. As the group's lead guitarist and secondary vocalist, Cox ...

and

Damon Albarn Damon Albarn (; born 23 March 1968) is an English-Icelandic musician, singer-songwriter and composer, best known as the frontman and primary lyricist of the rock band Blur and as the co-creator and primary musical contributor of the virtual ...

, founder members of Blur, met at the local school,

. Stanway is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086. The £4.3m A12 bypass opened in 1970. Local pubs include the Princess Charlotte (the first pub in the UK to be named after

Princess Charlotte of Wales Princess Charlotte of Wales may refer to: * Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796–1817), the only child of George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV of the United Kingdom ** Princess Charlotte of Wales (1812 EIC ship), a ship named after the pri ...

) and the Swan on London Road, and Live and Let Live on Millers Lane. There are five schools – three primary schools,Lexden Springs School and The Stanway School which has academy status, and describes itself as a "Humanities and Maths & Computing College". Four of the five schools are close together, on adjacent roads with the third primary behind the Tollgate shopping centre. An ever-expanding shopping district comprising The Tollgate Centre and Stane Park occupies an area close to the A12, these centres are home to national retailers such as B&Q, Sainsbury's, Homebase, Next and Marks and Spencer (having closed its city centre store in 2022). Further shops and businesses such as the Co-op, Halfords and Hatfields occupy the Peartree road area,

Governance

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected to t ...

with the same name exists. The population of this ward at the 2011 census was 8,283.

Parish church

In the early

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

Stanway had two churches; All Saints' next to Stanway Hall, and St Albright's in Little Stanway on the London Road (now the B1408). All Saints' church, first recorded in about 1260, had fallen out of use during the 16th century,'Stanway: Churches', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 10: Lexden Hundred (2001), pp. 270-273. Accessed through th
online version
but was repaired and the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

and north aisle were demolished in about 1605 by Sir John Swinterton, when it became the private chapel to Stanway Hall. In the early 18th century the church was said to be "utterly decayed" and remains a ruin. The current

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

is dedicated to Saint Albright, who is generally identified with Saint Ethelbert the King, a king of the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

kingdom of

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...

, who was killed in 794 AD. It was in existence in the late 11th century and was a parish church soon afterwards but was referred to as a chapel in later documents. The oldest parts of the present building date from the 12th century and incorporate Roman bricks in the heads of some of the windows. A new chancel was added in 1880 when the church was restored by

George Gilbert Scott Sir George Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811 – 27 March 1878), known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started ...

Druid of Colchester

In 1996, before the expansion of the Stanway sand and gravel quarry, an archaeological team was called in to investigate the outline of five ancient ditched enclosures identified by aerial photography. There, just off the A12 to Colchester, they discovered the grave of the "

Druid of Colchester The “Druid of Colchester” is the name of an archaeological site discovered in Stanway, near Colchester. It is the grave of a person buried with surgical tools and a small board-game. The person whose cremated remains were buried in the grav ...

".''Games Britannia – 1. Dicing with Destiny'',

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

, 1:05am Tuesday 8 December 2009

Sport and leisure

Stanway has a

Non-League football Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is specifically used to de ...

club Stanway Rovers F.C. who play at New Farm Road.

References

External links

{{authority control Civil parishes in Essex Villages in Essex Colchester (town) Borough of Colchester