This sudden arrival was part of a sprawling new web of commuter districts that spread across the south of Essex. Formerly bucolic outposts such as West Ham, East Ham, Ilford and Barking became bustling metropolitan centres.

The Invention of Essex : The Making of an English County The Invention of Essex : The Making of an English County

Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting.Though only a few miles away from London, rural Essex folk have often been seen as backward by their neighbours in the capital – poor, poorly educated, clinging to superstitions long discarded by their urban counterparts. Still, the rise of manufacturing in these newly metropolitan Essex hubs did not create prosperity for everyone.

THE INVENTION OF ESSEX - PressReader THE INVENTION OF ESSEX - PressReader

I remember my mum and dad refusing to sign one London-born homeowner’s petition to have his sister, a renter, evicted for being the mother of a “problem family”.

From Loadsamoney and ‘Basildon man’ to Towie and Brexit – Essex has long been held up as both the authentic England and the crudest, stupidest symbol of Englishness. Abigail’s Party, which played to packed houses over 104 nights in Hampstead and was later adapted for TV, told the story of a suburban soiree that descended into tragic farce. But beyond the sensationalist headlines lies a strange and secret place with a rich history: of smugglers and private islands, artists and radicals, myths and legends. It was a shorthand for the way the whole country seemed to be changing, for the emergence of a brash and crass new individualism – and soon, it would become a shorthand for the discomfort with those changes, for a fear about what Essex man and his pushy girlfriend threatened to reveal about the true nature of Englishness.