Local electrician in Marks Tey

Marks Tey is a small place with an outsized amount going on. The 2021 census put the parish at 2,617 people, but the station, the A12 and the A120 all pass through it.

It is six miles from us, about eight minutes on a clear road, so it is one of the quickest villages we reach outside Colchester itself.

The station opened in 1843 on what is now the Great Eastern Main Line, 46 miles and 49 chains out of London Liverpool Street.

There are two trains an hour to Liverpool Street off peak, and Marks Tey is also the junction for the Gainsborough Line branch up to Sudbury, which runs hourly.

The car park holds 271 spaces with 260 cycle spaces alongside, and passenger entries and exits reached 0.474 million in 2024 to 2025.

That matters for our work in a very ordinary way. A parish this size with that many commuters means a lot of houses where nobody is home between nine and five.

So we ask for access arrangements up front. A key safe, a neighbour, a partner working from home, or a day booked off. Whatever it is, we would rather agree it than discover it on the morning.

The A120 actually begins at Marks Tey, heading west for Braintree, Stansted and Bishop's Stortford, and the A12 dual carriageway runs alongside.

The 2019 character assessment prepared for the neighbourhood plan describes the A120 through the village as over capacity, with mini-roundabouts and pedestrian refuges as the only crossings.

Housing here divides into clear eras, which is unusually helpful when you are trying to guess the age of an installation before you have seen it.

The historic core is sixteenth to nineteenth century: farmhouses, barns and cottages, including the brickworkers' cottages on Church Lane.

Then came 1930s ribbon development along the roads, with Highfields Dairy and the school and houses built late in that decade.

The Little Marks estate got consent on 24 October 1968. It is a single spine road, Ashbury Drive, feeding cul-de-sacs including Bury Close, Maybury Close and Danbury Close.

Colne Park estate was proposed in the mid 1960s by Metropolitan Country Estates and built out through the late sixties and seventies by several different builders, which is why the house types vary so much.

It sits between Jays Lane, Long Green and Wilson's Lane, and was originally laid out on Radburn principles with pedestrian routes separated from cars.

Station Road as it stands was rebuilt around 1969 after the original was lost to the bypass, and the A12 dualling of that year took other property with it.

Practically, a late sixties or seventies estate house that has never been touched is now well past the age where the consumer unit and the original circuits deserve testing rather than trust.

Rubber or early PVC cable, no residual current protection, and lighting points wired with no earth at the switch or the rose are all plausible findings in that stock.

The 1930s ribbon housing and the older cottages are a different question again, and there the surprise is usually how much has been altered rather than how little.

St Andrew's church is Grade I and worth knowing about if you live near it. The walls use septaria and conglomerate with reused Roman brick around the windows.

Its tower base is late fourteenth or early fifteenth century with a timber upper stage added around 1750, reclad in the 1885 restoration and reshingled in 1952 after bomb blast damage in 1944.

Marks Tey Hall is Grade II with a Grade II star barn from about 1400 to the south, and there are further listings at Coley House, The Villa on Old London Road and The Red Lion on Coggeshall Road.

The brickworks is still working. W H Collier on Church Lane has been making clay brick since 1863, with an active quarry on site and a Grade II listed bottle kiln.

Its pit is also a geological SSSI of 29.5 hectares, holding a continuous pollen record through the entire Hoxnian interglacial, roughly 400,000 years ago. Few villages this size can say that.

One more thing worth stating plainly. The West Tey garden community, up to 24,000 homes, was found not justified or deliverable by the planning inspector in his letter of 15 May 2020, and the sites came out of the plan. Marks Tey stays the size it is.

• 2,617 residents at the 2021 census, in a parish carrying a mainline station, the start of the A120 and a working brickworks.
• The historic core is sixteenth to nineteenth century farmhouses, barns and cottages, including the brickworkers' cottages along Church Lane.
• 1930s ribbon development runs along the main roads, with Highfields Dairy and the school and adjoining houses dating from late in that decade.
• The Little Marks estate was consented on 24 October 1968, laid out along the Ashbury Drive spine with cul-de-sacs off it.
• Colne Park was proposed in the mid 1960s and built out through the late sixties and seventies by several builders, so house types vary street to street.
• Colne Park sits between Jays Lane, Long Green and Wilson's Lane and was originally planned on Radburn principles, separating pedestrians from traffic.
• Station Road was rebuilt around 1969 after the original was lost to the bypass, and the A12 dualling that year removed further property.
• Untouched late sixties and seventies estate housing is now old enough that the board and the original circuits want testing rather than assuming.
• Rubber or early PVC cable, no residual current protection, and lighting points with no earth at the rose are all realistic findings in that stock.
• St Andrew's is Grade I, its walls built of septaria and conglomerate with reused Roman brick at the window quoins.
• The church tower has a late medieval base and a timber upper stage from around 1750, reclad in 1885 and reshingled in 1952 after 1944 blast damage.
• Marks Tey Hall is Grade II with a Grade II star barn of about 1400, and Coley House, The Villa and The Red Lion are listed as well.
• W H Collier has made clay brick on Church Lane since 1863, with a working quarry and a Grade II listed bottle kiln on the site.
• Marks Tey Brickpit is a geological SSSI of 29.5 hectares, holding a full pollen record of the Hoxnian interglacial from around 400,000 years ago.
• The West Tey garden community of up to 24,000 homes was found not justified or deliverable by the planning inspector on 15 May 2020 and removed from the plan.

4.9★★★★★(47)