Keeping up with its piers

YOU have to hand it to the people of Essex for their sense of humour.

From the jokes about its women in the early ’90s, through Birds of a Feather and Gavin & Stacey to Catherine Tate’s “What am I like?” storyteller, the county’s inhabitants often find themselves held up to ridicule.

But ITV2’s The Only Way Is Essex shows that at least some of them don’t mind playing along to the stereotype.

It’s all a long way away from Essex’s gentler past, one which is hinted at by the monk and fisherman that adorn the coat of arms of Southend-on-Sea.

And on a recent visit I found this peaceful side still exists for those prepared to look hard enough.

The monk on the badge signifies the 12th Century Priory situated in nearby Prittlewell.

The friars have long since vacated the building but its grounds – the picturesque Priory Park – are worth a visit.

Every Saturday in the summer, a free concert is held at the park’s bandstand.

If the weather is nice – and as Southend is the driest town in Britain, you have as good a chance as anywhere that it will be – it’s an ideal spot for a picnic.

If influential religious orders are hard to come by in modern-day Southend, links with fishing certainly are not.

Leigh-on-Sea, just along the coast from Southend, is famed for its cockle sheds and seafood restaurants.

It may only be a 10-minute train ride from the town centre but the cobbled main street of Old Leigh will take you back centuries (it’s recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as being a “small fishing hamlet”).

While the industry survives to this day, fishermen don’t have to sleep by their boats any more. So the cottages that once housed them on the dockside have been turned into craft shops and places to eat and drink.