page_title: Clacton-on-Sea
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Clacton-on-Sea / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of Clacton Spear 01 The Clacton Spear, display at the National History Museum. London. Sign reads: "The Clacton spear Made of yew, this spear point is the oldest preserved wooden spear in the world, Its owner would probably have used this as a lethal weapon, stabbing prey at close range to generate enough force to pierce the animal's skin. Taxus sp. Clacton, Essex, England, around 420,000 years old. E1138"
context_page_description: Clacton-on-Sea is the largest town in the Tendring peninsula and district in Essex, eastern England, and was founded as an urban district in 1871. It is a seaside resort that saw a peak of tourists in the summer months between the 1950s and 1970s.
  The town's economy continues to rely significantly on entertainment and day-trip facilities and it is strong in the service sector, with a large retired population. The north-west part of the town has two business/industrial parks. In the wider district, agriculture and occupations connected to the Port of Harwich provide further employment. It lies within the Clacton United Kingdom Parliament constituency.
context_section_description: Clacton was a site of the lower Palaeolithic Clactonian industry of flint tool manufacture. The "Clacton Spear", a wooden (yew) spear found at Clacton in 1911 and dated at 450,000 years ago, is the oldest such spear to have been found in Britain.
  There is plentiful archaeological evidence of scattered settlement in the area, including Beaker Folk traces at Point Clear to the south and round houses (as cropmarks) near the A133 extension from Weeley to the north. There may have been a pre-Roman (i.e. Celtic) settlement at Gt. Clacton and there were almost certainly scattered farmsteads as the important British Celtic settlement at Colchester was only about 15 miles (24 km) away.  No traces of substantial Roman settlement have been found at Clacton though there are several Roman villa sites nearby (e.g. Alresford, Wivenhoe, Brightlingsea). After the Anglo-Saxon migration and the foundation of the kingdom of Essex, a village called Claccingtun ("the village of Clacc's or Clacca's people") was established. No pre-Norman buildings survive today. The Domesday Book of 1086 records the village as Clachintuna.
  Clacton was repeatedly surveyed by the Army in the Napoleonic Wars as a possible invasion beach-head for Napoleon and his Dutch allies. There was a large army and militia camp where Holland-on-Sea now stands. In 1810 five Martello Towers were built to guard the beaches between Colne Point to the south and what is now Holland-on-Sea to the north of the town.
  In 1871 the Essex railway engineer and land developer Peter Bruff, the steamboat owner William Jackson, and a group of businessmen built a pier and the Royal Hotel (now converted to flats) on a stretch of farmland adjoining low gravelly cliffs and a firm sand-and-shingle beach near the villages of Great and Little Clacton. The town of Clacton-on-Sea was officially incorporated in 1872 and laid out rather haphazardly over the next few years: though it has a central 'grand' avenue (originally Electric Parade, now Pier Avenue) the street plan incorporates many previously rural lanes and tracks, such as Wash Lane. Plots and streets were sold off piecemeal to developers and speculators. In 1882 the Great Eastern Railway already serving the well-established resort of Walton-on-the-Naze along the coast, built a spur to Clacton-on-Sea with a junction at Thorpe-le-Soken.
  Clacton grew into the largest seaside resort between Southend-on-Sea and Great Yarmouth, with some 10,000 residents by 1914 and c.20,000 by 1939. Due to its accessibility from the East End of London and the Essex suburbs, Clacton, like Southend, remained predominantly geared to catering for working-class and lower-middle-class holidaymakers – though it had, and has, its more 'select' areas.
  For well over a century Clacton Pier has been an RNLI lifeboat station.
  Just before the Second World War the building of Butlin's Holiday Camp boosted its economy, though the Army took it over between then and 1945 for use as an internment, engineer, pioneer and light anti-aircraft artillery training camp.
  Four notable incidents occurred in Clacton-on-Sea during World War II. First, very early in the war a German airman bailed out over the town. Procedures for dealing with enemy captives were not yet well-established and he was treated as a celebrity guest for some days, including by the town council, before eventually being handed over to the military. Second, a Luftwaffe Heinkel 111 bomber crashed into the town on 30 April 1940, demolishing several houses in the Vista Road area as one of the magnetic mines on board exploded on impact, killing the crew and two civilians; another mine was defused by experts from the Navy. Third, the Wagstaff Corner area was bombed in May 1941, demolishing some well-known buildings. Finally, a V2 rocket hit in front of the Tower Hotel, injuring dozens of troops inside though without bringing down the structure. Clacton lay beneath the route taken by many of the V1 and V2 bombs aimed at London.
  A big role in the town during the pre- and post-war period was played by the Kingsman family, which bou
caption: Clacton Spear, Natural History Museum, London
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