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| Tudor & Stuart History. |
| The castle played a
central role in 1648 when Colchester was put
under seige during the English Civil War. At the
rear of the castle there is a monument which
marks the spot on which two Royalist commanders,
Lucas & Lisle, were executed by a
Parliamentarian firing squad when the town
eventually fell. The people of Colchester who
suffered from the effects of the seige, were
later to become victims of the Great Plague in
which it is believed over 4,000 of them died,
half the town's population at that time. The Dutch Quarter is another historic area that any visitor to Colchester should make sure is on their list. It is named after a large number of Dutch refugees who fled from Flanders to Colchester in around 1575 after a failed rebellion against Catholic Spain. Many of these people were skilled weavers and set-up a community where they lived and worked. Many of their timber-framed houses and are still here in their original, unspoilt state. |
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| In the photograph above you can see another of the many pubs in Colchester. This one, the Stockwell Arms in Stockwell Street, is situated in the heart of the Dutch Quarter. Other places of interest from this era of Colchester's history are the Seige House pub (see below), which still has bullet holes in its walls from the 1648 Seige of Colchester and Tymperleys Clock Museum, housed in a timber-framed building dating back to about 1500. |
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