MISTLEY TOWN

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Originally Mistley Thorn, owes much of  its present appearance firstly to the Rigby family,  owners of the Mistley Estate.The family were well-connected, the elder Richard Rigby being a member of the Royal Assembly, and in 1705 Parliament enacted a bill decreeing that this stretch of the River Stour should be made navigable between Sudbury and Brantham. This put Mistley in an ideal position to take advantage of the trans-shipping of goods between the river traffic and the sea-going vessels bound for London and Continental Europe. Richard Rigby made a fortune from the South Sea Company, settled at Mistley and built a mansion, a new wharf and kilns.

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He was succeeded by his son, also Richard, who with the patronage of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Bedford rose to become Paymaster of the Forces in 1768. By the time he died in 1788, he had recast the Hall and the church, erected the almshouses provided for in his father’s will, and built commercial and residential properties in the village. A Roman road leading from Mistley to the nearby provincial capital of Roman Britain at Camulodunum or is now know as Colchester has led to the suggestion that there may have been a port in the vicinity of the modern village which served the town in the Roman period. Mistley is the village where Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, was reputed to have lived, according to legend owning  Mistley Inn. Mistley is the location of one of five Cold War control rooms in Essex. Built in 1951, it was opened as a museum called the Secret Bunker in 1996 but closed in 2002.

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MISTLEY TOWERS

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Are the twin towers of the now demolished Church of St. Mary the Virgin at Mistley in Essex. The original Georgian parish church on the site had been built in classical style early in the 18th century following the death of Richard Rigby Esquire. Later in that century there was a grandiose plan by his son, the wealthy politician Richard Rigby, to transform Mistley Thorn into a spa town.

 

Rigby wished to see a church from the windows of his mansion and a suitably grand church was required for the affluent visitors expected to patronise the new spa. Thus in 1776, the renowned architect Robert Adam was commissioned to enhance the church.

His design was in the neoclassical style, with a tower at both the east and the west ends of the church. These are now all that remain of the once magnificent structure.

 

The square symmetrical towers are in the neoclassical style, resembling tall pavilions rather than towers, with each facade pedimented and the whole surmounted by a cupola decorated with blind windows interspersed by Ionic columns. At ground floor level two unfluted ionic columns at each corner support a decorative cornice. The columns are decorative only, and appear to serve no structural purpose. The design of the towers creates the impression that the building was once more of a miniature cathedral than a parish church.

 

However, the main body of the church was small and occupied the now empty site between the two towers. It was a single story structure with a simple hipped roof and an entrance portico at its centre. This part of Adam's church was demolished in 1870, when the new parish church in New Road was built. The remaining towers are Grade I listed.

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THE MALTINGS

 

The second influence on Mistley derives from the huge maltings erected between 1896 and 1904 mostly for Free, Rodwell and Co Ltd. Seven separate maltings were built all of which survive except for No 7 to the rear of School Lane. and this was reputed to be the largest in Britain but was destroyed by fire in 1995 and subsequently demolished. A public footpath actually runs straight through the central yard of the 3.5 acre EDME works, so it is possible to have a close-up view of the lorries when they are unloading grain into the siloes, though you are really only supposed to enter in order to be connecting with Green Lane. 

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