Stanway is a suburb,

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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

& village in the

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in northeastern Essex, England. It is the second-largest settlement in the county, with a population of 130,245 at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census. The demonym is ''Colcestrian''. Colchester occupies the ...

district, in

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

, England near

. 'Stanway' is an Anglo-Saxon name for the 'stone way' of the Roman road, now the A12. In 2021 the parish had a population of 9,600. 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 60th anniversary on 2 June 2023. The zoo is home to many rare and endangered species, including big cats, primates and birds as w ...

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. Th ...

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

and

Damon Albarn Damon Albarn (, ; born 23 March 1968) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known as the frontman, main vocalist, and lyricist of the rock band Blur (band), Blur and the co-creator and primary musical con ...

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

. The TV mini-series Swiped: The School That Banned Smartphones was filmed in Stanway. 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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

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) (Charlotte Augusta), the only child of George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV of the United Kingdom ** ''Princess Charlotte of Wales'' (ship), an East In ...

) 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. A 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. The biggest B&Q and

Sainsbury's J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is a British supermarket and the second-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company was the largest UK r ...

stores in the world are located in the shopping district of Stanway.

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 t ...

with the same name exists. The population of this ward at the 2011 census was 8,283. It is a part of the Witham constituency.

Business District

A major studio and filming facility, owned by iSite, is located in the business district of Stanway.

Parish church

In the early

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

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 (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

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 ...

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

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

kingdom of

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

, 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), largely 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 ...

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 gra ...

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

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, 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 association football, 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 ...

club

Stanway Rovers F.C. Stanway Rovers Football Club is a association football, football club based in Stanway, Essex, Stanway, near Colchester, in Essex, England. They are members of the and play at the Hawthorns. History The modern club was established on 10 July 1 ...

who play at New Farm Road.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Essex Civil parishes in Essex Colchester Borough of Colchester