A local history lesson - by JD Schnauzer

Hi everyone - it's JD here. Now, since my brother took over our blog recently to boast about his amazing detective skills in 'The Case of The Mysterious Blue Pelican' I thought it would only be fair for me to take over a post of my own to let our pals know a little bit more about where we live. This is because we both love our home town and we'd like to share a little bit of its history.

As you probably all know we live in a place called 'Clacton-On-Sea' but what you probably don't know is that the name of our town dates back to 500 AD - I don't even want to think about just HOW long that is in dog years, suffice to say it was a very, VERY long time ago! Anyway, in 500 AD Saxons - under their leader Clacc - set up residence and named the place 'Clacc Inga Ton' which translates as 'the Village of Clacc's People'. The 'On-Sea' part of our town's name was added by more modern humans, probably to make sure there's no confusion about what all that blue, wet stuff is that floats along side our town, he he he!

I'd like to do a few posts like this about our local history so I've decided to impart a juicy little snippet of information like this each time and then add some photos of historic local landmarks. But do let me know what you think of this post okay? As I wouldn't want to bore you all with local history if you don't find it interesting....

Anyway, without further ado, here are some photos of remaining memories of World War II that we have dotted around our town. These are look-out towers that can be found along Clacton seafront.

A World War II look-out tower - a genuine piece of local history!

Although a bit of scaffolding has been added to this particular one (as it's now used as a bird watching tower by local twitchers!) you can see the series of small 'windows' where the soldiers would have stood to watch the seas for approaching enemies. This particular look-out tower is on the highest point of the coast and is set back slightly further than the others, on the top of a hill. Because of this high vantage point it is in better condition than the others - and it also offers spectacular views, so it is very popular with twitchers and walkers alike. We like it when FH picks us up and puts us on the very top of it....

"Don't look down Max!!! Gosh, it's kinda high up here......!"

...because it means we can really appreciate the amazing views! From this look out tower you can look directly out to sea....

Amazing sea views from the look-out tower, even more spectacular when the weather is as beautiful as it was on this day!

....or you can look over to the nature reserve behind it, where there is a small lake where lots of geese and some herons live! (If you biggify the picture below you can see the bird hides in front of the lake.)

Nature reserve with small lake and lots of very noisy geese!

There are several other look-out towers that were built directly on the beach - because of this they are not in such good condition. These beach-front look-out towers have now been incorporated into our modern-day sea wall defences - we suppose it's an agreeable compromise to ensure a bit of local history isn't destroyed.

Another look-out tower as part of our sea defence wall! If you biggify the picture above you can see the two of us checking out pee-mail alongside it - there's always some really good messages left here!

Even though these other look-out towers are hidden behind the sea defence walls we still think they're fascinating and really appreciate that we live in such an amazing place.

JD checks out the view from a rather crumbly looking look-out tower!