IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Church Road, CLACTON-ON-SEA, CO15 6JQ

Late Victorian, for a period part of St. Osyth's Training College.

The Towers is on Marine Parade East. It is not a nationally Listed Building. It was built in 1891 as The Towers Hotel, but never reopened after the Second World War. Instead it became a hall of residence for the St Osyth Training College, formerly The Grand Hotel, on the opposite side of Vista Road, before being converted into apartments. Please see Robin Webster's Image] for a view taken from a similar position two years, bar a day, earlier.

Clacton has a great number of seafront shelters, all of which are of different designs. This one is at the seaward end of St Paul's Road. The pavement along Marine Parade East here forms part of National Cycle Network Route 51.

The Grand Hotel was built here, on Marine Parade East, between 1892 and 1897. It is of steel box frame construction with red brick curtain walls, and, according to Historic England, is the earliest so far discovered with a complete and coherent internal structural steel system. It was used by the military during the Second World War, and then converted to a teacher training college in 1950. It is shown on the 1952 and all later 20th Century large scale Ordnance Survey maps as St Osyth's Training College. It is known by Historic England as the Colchester Institute. However in the early 2000s it was converted to apartments and renamed as just "The Grand". It is a Grade II Listed Building and the Historic England website describes the east façade (the main one to the left, facing the sea) thus:- "East front of 3 storeys and dormer attic; 19 window range. Symmetrical composition of 6 full-height projections, consisting of single polygonal turrets at the North and South ends, 2 3-window range bays with shaped gables inside these, and 2 central canted window bays. The 4 central projections separated by single-window bays. Facade horizontally divided at floor levels by rendered bands covering rolled steel joists and decorated with strapwork pargeting (many pargeted panels lost). Fenestration of 9/1 horned sashes to ground floor and 4/1 or 6/1 to next 2 floors, and 3/1 to the 3 pedimented dormers. All windows on lower 2 floors with tapering sash hoods. Central semi-circular porch, on 2 pairs of unfluted Doric columns. Double half-glazed doors beneath overlight with 4:8:4 panes. Cast-iron balconies between projections on first and second floors. 4 transverse stacks on front roof slope and additional stacks at oblique angles to North and South ends."

Photograph of the beach being cleaned, taken from the upper promenade, with my back to Vista Road, at 9.25 a.m. BST. The machine pulled by the tractor sieves the sand before smoothing it. The roof of the Paddle Bay Diner (on the lower promenade) and the hand-rail of the path down the cliff are visible, along with the beach and sea beyond. One of the fish-tail groynes installed as part of sea defence work recently is just visible above the waves to the left. The blue and pink blur immediately above the diner's roof parapet is an ornamental wind-sock in the shape of a fish.

As part of the Clacton and Holland-on-Sea Coast Protection Scheme, newly deposited beach material, a sand-shingle mix, is arranged on shore. The picture was taken looking towards the pier with back to Marine Parade East, by the junction with St Paul's Road.