Understand
Colchester is a picturesque provincial town in the county of Essex, and the geographical region of East Anglia. It is commonly regarded as the "oldest recorded town" in England due to being mentioned by roman author Pliny.
Originally the capital of the Celtic tribe Trinovantes, it was conquered by Claudius's army in ad43 and became the first Roman capital - and Britain's first-ever city. Known as Camulodunum, it was burned to the ground by Boudicca's Iceni tribe approximately two decades later.
Boudicca and her 100,000-strong army were soon defeated, but Colchester never returned to prominence in Roman Britain, becoming instead a settlement for ex-legionnaires.
After the fall of the Roman empire, Colchester then passed through the hands of the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans and was home to the royalists during the month-long siege of the English Civil War.
The town's main attraction is the Norman castle, founded by William the Conqueror himself and once the twin sister of the Tower of London, built at the same time and almost identical in design.
The town also boasts Roman walls, Saxon and Norman churches, countless timber-framed houses, buildings still showing bullet-holes and scars from the Civil War, and also the oldest Victorian water tower in Britain.
