Welcome to the Colchester Civic Society Website

Thank you for visiting the Colchester Civic Society’s website. We hope that you will take time to explore it and to discover our hugely diverse range of activities, all aimed at making Colchester an even more special place to live, work and visit.

We would love to welcome you as a member of the Society, whether you want to take an active role, enjoy our programme of events or simply provide quiet support. You don’t have to live or work in the city to be a member. Please go to the ‘Join Us’ page for more information.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the website or have additional questions, please contact us at info@colchestercivicsociety.co.uk or telephone 07771626561.

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Become a Member

Becoming a member is simple and costs just £11 per year for a single membership, £16 for a couple and £40 for a Business membership.  Please join us.

Work is in progress to restore the public art in Colchester's Southway subways.  The concrete art murals were placed in the subways to brighten up the area in the 1970s.  The murals by sculptors  Henry Collins and Joyce Pallott, the husband and wife team who lived and worked in Colchester have weathered the passage of time well, but were in need of restoration.
Colchester Civic Society and Colchester In Bloom started fundraising in 2014 to raise the funds needed.  Essex Heritage Trust gave a grant for the initial restoration of the Abbeygate Mural. Now with an award of funds from the Heritage Lottery which was made possible by National Lottery players, and an additional grant from The Harvey Benham Trust the restoration of all of these murals is ensured.  The murals were made by making a detailed reverse mould and filling that with concrete. Working to brighten up the St Botolphs Roundabout subway.

What We Do

Click on the button below to see the full list of pages outlining the work we do. This includes Conservation Work (as shown in the photo above), Planning, Highways, Licensing, Eyes and Ears, Commemorative Plaques, Public Footpaths, Trees, Street Naming, Publications and Heritage Open Days

The Colchester Plaque Trails

This is a unique achievement created by members of our society with the help of Placecheck Online. Three Plaque Trails have been created for the town and can be followed using online maps on your mobile phone.
Each trail not only shows the position of many of Colchester’s plaques on a map, but also provides a photo for each one, along with comprehensive information about the person or place commemorated.
Follow this link for the plaques trails. When you have opened up a Trail, simply touch the blue dots in turn to bring up each plaque and accompanying information.

Colchester On Film

Following the rediscovery of several films of Colchester dating from the 1970’s and earlier we have created this page in order to provide a point of access  for viewing  any films about Colchester that come to our attention and can be made available for viewing online. The first section offers archive footage and a second section offers links to a range of more contemporary films.

Latest News

Colchester’s Great Winter Clean, 15th January to 15th February 2024

  If you love Colchester and loathe litter, here is an opportunity to help towards making Colchester ‘Britain’s first recorded litter-free city.’ The aim is to remove all the old litter and rubbish blighting the Borough, including cleaning up the numerous grot-spots. The target is to fill 1,000 to 2,000 bags. Why in the middle

Thirty Cast Iron Lampposts due to be lost with the changeover to LED lighting

An update on The Cast Iron Lamppost Project in 2023 from John Salmon. As many of you will know by now Colchester Civic Society is running a project for the stripping and repainting of Colchester’s cast iron lampposts. This began in 2020 and has now just completed it’s fourth year, with lampposts in Errington Road, Wickham

New Archive Film

Three more films have been added to  our Colchester on Film Archive Section this month.  There is a six minute colour film, with commentary covering the major retail developments of Lion Walk, Culver Square and also the St. John’s Street supermarket and multi storey car park, a film about the opening of the Mercury Theatre

A Visit To Jumbo

A Visit To Jumbo Some of our members took the opportunity to climb up inside the  water tower in January 2023. The Colchester and North East Essex Building Preservation Trust, who are now the lease holders, hosted two parties of members  on this visit and others, who did not feel up to the long climb,

Colchester City Status Celebrations – A story from Jo Edwards

Colchester officially became a city on Wednesday, 23 November, when the letters patent – an official document written on parchment – was presented to the mayor during a special meeting of the Full Council.  As part of the media presentations of the event Jo Edwards agreed to be interviewed by BBC Essex on our behalf.

Update on our Cast Iron Lamppost renovation project

Colchester Civic Society’s project to renovate our cast iron lampposts is now in it’s third year. In the previous two years more than forty of Colchester’s historic cast iron lampposts, most of which were made in local foundries during the early years of the  twentieth century, have been stripped and repainted. This year teams in