THE Dutch Quarter is home to some of the town centre's most picturesque streets.

It is rich with history, being home to the old timber-framed Stockwell Arms, which is thought to date back as far as the 1380s.

Gazette:

But where do the Dutch come into it?

Some say it is where the Dutch settled when they brought their cloth-making trade to Colchester, but according to historian Andrew Phillips, this is not true. 

References to the Dutch Quarter only start to appear in the history books after the turn of the 20th Century, and as Mr Phillips told the Essex County Standard in 2013, the term 'Dutch Quarter' was only formally adopted after the Second World War. 

In the 1930s, the area was known simply as The North - an area which
stretched downhill to North Bridge.

According to Sir Bob Russell, the word 'Dutch' is thought to have been a word used by the people of Colchester to describe all foreigners who arrived in the town in the 1500s, when they fled religious persecution in what is now Belgium, Holland and France. So in fact, the refugees were mainly Flemish.

In a feature in the Essex County Standard last year, Sir Bob explained that Colchester received the first of 11 families in 1565, and by 1586, there were thought to be more than 1,200 refugees living in the town.

Gazette:

A lot of these families built homes in a similar style to houses you would see in Flanders in that period - with doors and other woodwork painted red and green, window frames painted white and rendered walls a light green.

More than 60 of the homes built by the refugees in the Dutch Quarter still
exist.

Colchester Council and the Civic Trust saved these homes from demolition in the early Fifties, when they were in poor condition.

Gazette:

Examples can still be seen in West Stockwell Street, East Stockwell Street, Northgate Street (formerly called Dutch Lane) and Maidenburgh Street.

But it does seem the refugees brought their cloth-making skills with them to Colchester. As Sir Bob explains, the refugee community quickly became established as a major economic force in the town.

According to Patrick Denney's Colchester History and Guide, they set about producing "a superior lightweight cloth of the best quality, and in a far higher league than that being made by the English clothiers."

  • Scroll through the gallery above to see old pictures of the Dutch Quarter from the Gazette and Essex County Standard archives.