Since 2022.

Contrary to its popular reputation, Essex has a history as a test bed for radical ideas: the UK’s first modernist homes; new towns; utopian towns built for employees around the factories where they worked; idealistic Christian and socialist colonies offering a fresh start and a simpler, more communal way of life. Its coastline – the longest of any English county after Cornwall - was once home to a profitable riverine trade and hideaways for smugglers. Today it mixes beach holiday resorts with sometimes bleak but beautiful mudflats, saltmarshes and creeks.