is the largest
Town on the
Tendring Peninsula, in
Essex ,
England and was founded in 1871. It is a
Seaside Resort which attracts many tourists in the summer. Clacton has a pleasure pier, arcades, a golf course and an airfield. For two days in the summer, tourists have the pleasure of watching an aircraft display, sometimes involving the
Lancaster Bomber ,
Spitfires ,
Helicopters , and the climax of the display - the
Red Arrows .
Clacton-on-Sea is also home to two theatres, the
West Cliff Theatre and the Princes Theatre. The West Cliff is one of the last theatres is the country to put on an old style summer show.
Clacton used to be home to one of the oldest
Butlins sites, but in 1983, it was closed and replaced with the
Martello Bay housing estate.
Clacton's population has grown hugely, in 1901 it was 7456, 1991 was 45,065 and today stands at over 53000.
Great Clacton was founded by the Celts in c.100BC. There are some vague traces of
Romans using the Clacton area as a seaside resort. The name Clacton dates from c. 500 when the area was settled by Saxons under their chief Clacc. The original name, Claccingaton, means the village of Clacc's people. The
Domesday Book , a census conducted by
William The Conqueror , records the village as ''Clachintuna''.
Early village life was dominated by St John's Church which is now the oldest building in Clacton. It has been suggested that smugglers may have used a tunnel from the coast to the Ship Inn to smuggle goods into the country, but this is discounted by serious historians. Nowadays, this village is called Great Clacton.
Clacton-on-Sea as we know it was officially founded by
Peter Bruff in
1871 as a seaside resort. Originally the main means of access was by sea. Ships came and docked at Clacton Pier, which is now an arcade and entertainment Pier. People who wanted to come by road had to go through Great Clacton. In the 1920s,
London Road was built to cope with the influx of holidaymakers.
In archaeology, Clacton is famous as the eponymous site of the lower
Palaeolithic Clactonian Industry of flint tool manufacture.
Before the
Industrial Revolution , Clacton's industry mainly consisted of arable farmland. As the industrial revolution spread across the country, farmers in Clacton realized that their equipment was obsolete. A steam powered mill was built in 1867 to replace the windmill, which was eventually demolished in 1918.
