Dovercourt
Dovercourt is a small seaside town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Harwich, in the Tendring district, in the county of Essex, England. It is older than its smaller but better-known neighbour, the port of Harwich, and appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. Today the towns are contiguous. In 1921 the parish had a population of 7695. Dovercourt is rich with civil war history and as a seaside resort offers shops and cafes for visitors and residents. The main shopping area is The High Street, with shops from independents to the national chains. The  town is served by Dovercourt railway station. History. The Saxon lord Wulwin/Ulwin was lord in 1066; by 1086 the estate was in possession of Aubrey de Vere I and remained part of the barony of his descendants the Earls of Oxford until the 16th century. It formed part of the dowry of Juliana de Vere when she married Hugh Bigod in the mid-12th century, and the sub-tenancy passed to the Bigod earls of Norfolk who held it as one knight's fee of the Veres. Countess Juliana's son Roger Bigod, 2nd Earl of Norfolk founded a chapel  at Harwich and granted it to Colne Priory, Essex, a Vere foundation. The present town dates back to 1845 when John Bagshaw, an East India merchant, moved to the area and bought the land where Dovercourt now stands. He developed plans to develop a new resort overlooking the sea with the help of W.H. Lindsey, a London architect. He started the project in 1845 by building a mansion, Cliff House, for himself and his family and actively promoted the railway link to the Harwich area. When a chalybeate spring was discovered in the grounds of Cliff House, Bagshaw extended the  property to incorporate a spa, library, pump room, and conservatory. He next developed Orwell Terrace where his son Robert John Bagshaw, like his father an MP for Harwich, moved into Banksea House in 1857. However the development project, which included Marine Parade and the Cliff Estate, caused Bagshaw financial difficulties and he was declared bankrupt in 1859. Although Cliffe House was demolished in 1909 and the Spa in 1920, most of his other developments still stand. On 1 October 1925 the parish was abolished and merged with Harwich St Nicholas to form Harwich. The 1980s BBC sitcom "Hi-de-Hi !" was filmed in Dovercourt, at "Warner’s Holiday Camp", which transformed into "Maplin’s". The camp, under the direction of Anna Essinger and aided by several of the staff from Bunce Court School, had been used in 1939 for refugee children arriving to be placed in foster homes in the Kindertransport mission, and was later re-developed as a housing estate, which is known as Hightrees. Lighthouses. In 1863 Trinity House erected a pair of cast iron screw-pile lighthouses on the beach, used until 1917 to guide ships around Landguard Point. They served as leading lights and functioned in  conjunction with a third lighthouse (a sector light established in 1861) on Landguard Point itself: from seaward the two Dovercourt lights aligned indicated the initial course of approach; vessels would keep to this course until the colour of the Landguard light was seen to change from red to white, whereupon the vessel would take a northerly course into Harwich Haven. When first built the Dovercourt lights used oil lamps and reflectors, and both displayed a fixed (i.e. steady) light. In 1878 the High Light was improved with the installation of a prismatic lens assembly, and in the early 1900s it  was given a flashing characteristic following the introduction of gas, in place of oil, as the illuminant for both lights. In 1917 Harwich Harbour Board took over responsibility for navigation marks in the vicinity and chose to mark the deep-water channel with a series of lighted buoys, rendering the lighthouses redundant. The lights were discontinued, but the structures left "in situ". In 1975 both lighthouses were designated as a scheduled monument, together with the stone causeway which runs between them. They were restored in the 1980s; however, following a detailed survey they were placed on Historic England's Heritage  at Risk Register in 2019.