Some of Our East Coast Towns
1893
Step into a fading Victorian England, where railroad timetables matter and every market town has a story stretching back centuries. J. Ewing Ritchie guides readers through the East Coast towns of Chelmsford, Colchester, Hadleigh, and beyond, recording what he sees in 1893 before the twentieth century remakes everything. His observations blend the particular with the historical, a factory's chimneys against medieval churches, local legends told in coaching inns, the pride of civic institutions just beginning to feel the pull of London. Ritchie writes as Christopher Crayon, that most trustworthy of Victorian travel writer personae: curious, well-read, slightly bemused by modern ways. The towns he visits are already ancient by his readers' standards; today they are positively prehistoric compared to our moment. This book preserves a world of market days and county identities, of train journeys undertaken with actual anticipation, of England when "East Coast" meant something definite and local.
