Britain’s Oldest City
This piece was first published in the brilliant Colchester 101 magazine. Copies are available for free around pubs, shops and other public places in the town.
Welcome to Colchester: Britain’s Newest City - nope, it’s not working for me either. For all the jokes about Britain’s Oldest Recorded Town, Colchester has an incredibly proud history that we need to not only celebrate, but also use as a springboard to build upon. Being sucked into becoming a sterile new city shouldn’t be part of this process.
Debate is growing around the town over a bid for Colchester to take on a city status. As part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations to mark the Queen’s 60th anniversary on the throne, Her Majesty is keen for a new city to emerge in 2013. It’s part of a growing populist trend to assimilate micro local history into a nationwide identikit sterile appearance. We built this town on Roman records, not on rock ‘n roll, yer Maj.
Colchester Borough Council has confirmed that it is “looking into” the city status bid; Destination Colchester is already talking of a survey to see what the good people of the town think about becoming a metropolis. And that really is where the debate is centred. City status probably won’t change your day-to-day life. The High Street will continue to evolve; trains out of North Station will still be *ahem* occasionally delayed and Colchester United sadly won’t be playing in the Champions’ League anytime soon.
What will happen with a city status however is the perception of Colchester, both from within and wider afield. A city mentality takes away all that is good about the local environment. Townsfolk have civic pride; city dwellers start to become postcode property snobs. Colchester is an amazing town as it is. We don’t need to be told that we are officially a city in order to have ambitions above our size.
Ah, but you’ve got to think outside of this small town mentality, the cynics will no doubt say. The cynics are also usually the folk who work within PR or advertising, and think nothing of feeding off the London economy, rather than keeping local Colchester industry afloat.
A town has personality - a city soon becomes anonymous. Should we really accelerate growth at such a pace, simply to shop dress the city branding? Celebrating what Colchester can offer to people looking to escape the city, seems more acceptable to me.
For all the folly of Britain’s Oldest Recorded Town, Colchester Zoo or even the crazed traffic islands - these are all unique to Colchester. Think then of Highwoods Country Park, the University, the emerging Cultural Quarter, theArts Centre, firstsite - even Blur, Jay Kay and dear old Darren Day. We don’t need to measure our status to create what is great about Colchester. Never mind the length – feel the thickness. Keeping it local allows the town to grow organically, without the PR boost of being dubbed a city.
The esteemed civic leaders of our town should be allowed to indulge in the chest beating PR circuit, but please don’t take it all too seriously. It’s nothing but putting your name out there and pimping out your past. It’s the Town Hall equivalent of writing your profile for an online dating site and then being slightly economical with the truth: Mature town with good connections would like to sell its soul and be shafted by someone from outside the area. Safe, um, cities only please.
Sure, we should play along with this beauty contest of a bidding process. It’s all about raising the profile and creating a buzz about Colchester. But the town has so much more to offer than simply calling itself Britain’s Newest City. Be careful what you wish for. Colchester City FC just sounds silly anyway.
