Moving Vanguard

Vanguard is a Dunkirk Little Ship which was among three that left here on 30^th May, 1940, to rescue WW2 soldiers stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk. An open boat and so lacking the protection of a deckhouse, she braved shellfire and strafing from the air, as she and her Burnham colleagues, Ma Joi and Seasalter, rescued around 600 soldiers. She is an Oyster Dredger, designed by Norman Dallimore in 1937 and built at Priors boatyard. Her lines are extraordinarily beautiful and she had the reputation of being a fast river boat, gliding [more]

Fun, Fossils and Frights at Burnham Museum

The fossil hunt was attended by several families (13 adults, 11 children ). We were lucky with the weather considering it was October as it was a nice warm day.   I was fortunate this month to be assisted on the hunt by Jon Greaves (author of Fossils of the Dengie Hundred). Everyone who attended managed to find a fossil or two, with most of the day’s finds being pyrite fossils (organic matter such as plant parts and seeds, which became buried in the London clay and fossilised over time absorbing iron from [more]

Digging & Delving, A Potted History of the Burnham on Crouch Allotments

We have had a brilliant end to our Digging & Delving, A Potted History of the Burnham on Crouch Allotments project this weekend with an exhibition and book launch at Burnham Museum.  On Friday we were visited by our local MP, John Whittingdale, and members of BTC, Vanessa Bell and Bob Calver.  They were full of praise for the project and discussions ensued about the future of our allotments.  We will watch that space!   We continued through on Saturday and by popular demand extended it, by opening on Sunday too.  The exhibits, old [more]

Burnham Sunsets

Words and Photography by Nick Skeens   Wow. The sunsets in Burnham are absolutely stunning. Why?      

A principle reason has to be the river setting, and the fact that the Crouch flows through a flat landscape under a big sky. There are times, standing on the quay looking south towards Southend, that you can almost sense the curvature of the Earth, the land is so flat, the sky so vast.

So with no hills to get in the way, the sky can paint with delirious freedom from its palette of reds, oranges, blues, [more]

Radio Caroline - 648kHz

Radio Caroline

By Peter Crisp

On Aug 14th 1967 a large proportion of the UK population, and many more abroad, were listening to the various pirate radio stations that had been broadcasting with huge popularity to the UK for three or more years. Being moored just a few miles off the   Essex coast many of us in the Dengie will have grown up with the offshore   pirates providing the soundtrack to our lives.

Everyone was happy aside from the Government, who had concluded in 1962 that the public did not want commercial popular [more]

Bottomless Prosecco -  Don’t mind if I do!

Bottomless Prosecco -  Don’t mind if I do!

On the 19th August The Ship Inn once again invited us down, this time for their Saturday special. Bottomless prosecco, two course meal, what a hard job I have!

We were welcomed in by the lovely manager Jasie Cracknell who saw us to our table, and then, the Prosecco started! And when they say bottomless, they mean it! Our glasses were never empty with the well trained staff ready and waiting, bottle in hand.


But it wasn't all about the endless bubbles and laughs with friends. The food as always was just mouth-watering.

I started with  [more]
Posted On 8-September-2017

Walk for Lisa

New North Ward Councillor Nick Skeens

New North Ward Councillor Nick Skeens

Normally Town Council by-elections in Burnham don’t create much controversy, but in this case it was incident packed from start to finish Maldon District Council kicked off events with polling cards incorrectly spelled in just one key respect. Then on July 14th through social media, with less than a week to go, popular independent candidate Wayne Davey announced that he intended withdrawing from the election because when advised to check

with Maldon’s elections office, they had told him that he could be reported [more]

Posted On 10-August-2017

Fire Station Open Day

Fire Station Open Day

July 16th saw the Burnham Fire Station’s annual open day. This is always a popular event with a bouncy castle, BBQ, face painting and a superb raffle.

As always children were able to climb into the fire trucks and have a go at being fire fighters for the day, with crew members assisting them to use the fire hose. During the day members of the crew put on a demonstration of “why not to put water on a chip fryer”. With flames 10ft high, the [more]

Posted On 10-August-2017