UNKNOWN ESSEX

BY

DONALD

MAXWELL

Being a series of unmethodical Explorations of the
County illustrated in line and colour by the Author

Printed in Great Britain

First published in 1925

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

LONDON AND BECCLES.

E7M 38

PREFACE

HERE are few travellers who have not some pre

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conceived idea of the county of Essex. All those who go down to the sea in ships, and have business in the great waters of London have at least a nodding acquaintance with those cursed Essexian plains," and imagine that the somewhat uneventful landscape continues without change to the confines of Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk. For this reason, perhaps, Essex has been to tourists the Cinderella of the Home Counties.

But Cinderella came into her own when the glass slipper was left behind. The couriers of the Bodley Head are scouring England in quest of the "Unknown," and, without wishing to refer to any of our counties as ugly sisters, I beg to report that the shoe fits. If it is impossible to find places where man has never trodden, it is quite easy to roam in regions where tourists have never been, and some account of Cinderella's charms are herein recorded.

My thanks are due to the Editors of the Graphic and the

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Yachting Monthly respectively, for their courtesy in allowing me to use sketches and matter that have appeared in their pages, and to Mr. Douglas Young for the kind loan of sketches from his collection for inclusion in this book.

DONALD MAXWELL.

BORSTAL, Rochester,

May 9th, 1925.