Dovercourt

Dovercourt is an area of Harwich in the Tendring district of Essex, England. Dovercourt has been administered as part of Harwich since at least the 17th century and forms part of the Harwich built up area. It is sometimes described as a suburb of Harwich and sometimes as a separate town. The area around Dovercourt High Street now serves as the main town centre of the Harwich built up area; there are few retail facilities in the old town of Harwich. Dovercourt is also a seaside resort, with beaches onto Dovercourt Bay on its southern side. It is served by Dovercourt railway station.

The name is common Brittonic with "Dover" coming from "dwfr", which is "water" in modern Welsh; the origin of "court" is unknown but possibly meant "land cut off by". Dovercourt was recorded as 'Douorcortae' in the year 1000.

Dovercourt appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, when it was a manor. The Domesday Book records that a Saxon lord called Wulwin or Ulwin had been lord of the manor in 1066; by 1086 the estate was in possession of Aubrey de Vere and remained part of the barony of his descendants, the Earls of Oxford, until the 16th century. It formed part of the dowry of Juliana de Vere when she married Hugh Bigod in the mid-12th century, and the sub-tenancy passed to the Bigod earls of Norfolk who held it as one knight's fee of the Veres. Countess Juliana's son Roger Bigod, 2nd Earl of Norfolk founded a chapel at Harwich and granted it to Colne Priory, Essex, a Vere foundation.

The original village of Dovercourt, later known as Upper Dovercourt, stands a little way inland around the parish church, dedicated to All Saints; the current building dates back to the 12th century.

Harwich grew up from the 12th century within the parish of Dovercourt, standing on a peninsula at its eastern end. Harwich had a chapel of ease by 1177 but remained a small settlement until the mid-13th century. Harwich was given the right to hold a market in 1253 and the town developed significantly after that as a market town and port, and was granted its first borough charter in 1318. Harwich was deemed to be a separate parish from Dovercourt for civil purposes by the 16th century, but remained part of the ecclesiastical parish of Dovercourt until 1871, when its chapel of St Nicholas was upgraded to being a parish church.

Harwich is known to have been granted several borough charters in medieval times, but the earliest surviving charter was issued in 1604. This charter confirms that the borough covered the whole area of the two parishes of Harwich St Nicholas and Dovercourt; it is not clear whether Dovercourt was added to the borough by virtue of that charter or whether Dovercourt was already included in the borough under the earlier lost charters.

In 1845 a property developer called John Bagshaw bought land in the area then known as Lower Dovercourt, immediately west of Harwich and to the east of Upper Dovercourt. He developed plans to develop a new resort overlooking the sea with the help of W.H. Lindsey, a London architect. He started the project in 1845 by building a mansion, Cliff House, for himself and his family and actively promoted the railway link to the Harwich area; Dovercourt railway station opened with the line to Harwich in 1854. When a chalybeate spring was discovered in the grounds of Cliff House, Bagshaw extended the property to incorporate a spa, library, pump room, and conservatory. He next developed Orwell Terrace where his son Robert John Bagshaw, like his father an MP for Harwich, moved into Banksea House in 1857. However the development project, which included Marine Parade and the Cliff Estate, caused Bagshaw financial difficulties and he was declared bankrupt in 1859. Although Cliffe House was demolished in 1909 and the Spa in 1920, most of his other developments still stand.

From at least 1604, the borough of Harwich had covered the two parishes of Dovercourt and Harwich St Nicholas. In 1925 the two civil parishes were merged into a single parish of Harwich matching the borough. At the 1921 census (the last before the abolition of the civil parish), Dovercourt had a population of 7,695.