When I found out where the UK’s oldest town was, I wasn’t expecting it to be a place I’ve passed through quite so frequently, or one still thriving today. I’ve been lucky enough to travel the breadth of Britain over my 31 years, from tiny hamlets in the Scottish Highlands to artsy towns in Cornwall. I’ve spent half my life calling London home and the other half in East Anglia; holidayed in Wales, visiting beaches accessible only by wooden swing; slept in cabins in the Cotswolds; road-tripped through Northern Ireland; and spent years studying in Newcastle. All of which is to say, if you’d asked me to guess where it was, I’d have imagined a barely-there archaeological site somewhere in rural Northumberland, rather than a thriving modern city in Essex, close to the Suffolk border and just 60 miles northeast of London.
I’m talking, of course, about Colchester.
Today, the city is popular for its fast commuter trains into the capital, relatively affordable housing, open green spaces and, of course, its rich history. But in around AD 43, it was known as Camulodunum: the first major Roman city and the initial capital of Roman Britain, before it was destroyed during Boudica’s rebellion in AD 61. The story of the Roman settlement didn’t end there, however, and Colchester was rebuilt in the years that followed.
During the Anglo-Saxon era, the city was largely neglected before later falling under Viking control. In AD 917, Edward the Elder drove the Vikings out, and Colchester began to regain its former stature. Following the Norman Conquest, Colchester Castle was built in 1066 over the ruins of an earlier Roman temple. Dating to the 1070s, it became the first and largest of the Normans’ great keeps, cementing Colchester’s importance as one of England’s key centres.
But the city’s history stretches back even further than the Roman conquest. Colchester began as an Iron Age settlement, ruled by Cunobelin, known as the ‘King of the Britons’. Evidence of this early history can still be found in the city today, including a collection of Iron Age and Roman artefacts at Colchester & Ipswich Museums.
