Harwich
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- This article is about the town in England. For other uses of the name, see Harwich (disambiguation).
- redirect
Harwich is a town in Essex, England, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the northeast, Ipswich to the northwest and Colchester to the southwest. The town is believed to date from the mid-12th century.
Its position on the estuaries of the Stour and Orwell rivers and its usefulness to mariners as the only safe anchorage between the Thames and Humber led to a long period of maritime significance, both civil and military. The town was heavily fortified, with Harwich Redoubt, Beacon Hill Battery, and Bath Side Battery. The famous diarist Samuel Pepys was MP for Harwich.
Harwich was the home town for Christopher Jones, the master and quarter-owner of the Mayflower, and was also a base for that ship.
The Royal Navy is no longer present in Harwich but adjacent Parkeston continues to offer a regular ferry service to Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands. Many operations of the large container port at Felixstowe and of Trinity House, the lighthouse authority, are managed from Harwich, and plans for the development of a new container port in Bathside Bay were approved by the British government in December 2005.
The town's coastal position, however, made it vulnerable to the North Sea Flood of 1953.
Harwich today is contiguous with Dovercourt and the two along with Parkeston are often referred to collectively as Harwich.
The Electric Palace Cinema, Harwich, is one of the oldest purpose-built cinemas to survive complete with its original projection room and ornamental frontage still intact and operational.
External links
- [Map sources] for Harwich
- [Electric Palace]
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