Qualla: Chelmsford

Chelmsford: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Romazur, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the evening of 15 June 1920, the Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba stepped up to a microphone in a corrugated-iron hut at the back of the Marconi New Street Works. Two 450-foot masts loomed over the Essex skyline. She sang an aria, then "Home, Sweet Home," then the British and French national anthems. Listeners on ships in the Atlantic and in homes across Europe heard her clearly. It was the first official publicised radio broadcast in the United Kingdom, and it happened here - not in London, not in New York, but on the edge of a market town that had been called Caesaromagus by the Romans and Celmeresfort by the men who wrote the Domesday Book.

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Image: Romazur | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chelmsford: Caesar's Marketplace

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarry1250, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Romans arrived in AD 60 and built a fort here on Watling Street, where it crossed the River Can. The civilian town that grew around it was given an unusually grand name: Caesaromagus, Caesar's field or Caesar's marketplace. No other town in Britain bore the imperial prefix. T...

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Image: Jarry1250 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chelmsford: A Bridge, a Charter, and Witches

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stuart Axe, CC BY-SA 4.0. Around 1100, Maurice, Bishop of London, ordered a bridge built over the River Can. Traffic that had flowed through nearby Writtle now flowed here, and Chelmsford grew. King John issued a market charter in 1199, and by 1218 the town was the seat of the Essex assizes - the travelli...

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Image: Stuart Axe | CC BY-SA 4.0

Chelmsford: The Birthplace of Radio

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robin Lucas, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1899, the young Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi opened his Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in a converted silk works in Hall Street. It was the first dedicated radio factory in the world, employing about fifty people. By 1912 he had outgrown it, building the purpose-d...

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Image: Robin Lucas | CC BY-SA 2.0

Chelmsford: December 1944, Henry Road

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Richter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Chelmsford's factories made ball bearings, radar valves and radio equipment for the war. The Luftwaffe came on 14 May 1943, killing over fifty people and leaving nearly a thousand homeless. Worse was still to come. On Tuesday 19 December 1944, just before bedtime, the 367th V2 ro...

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Image: Graham Richter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chelmsford: Cathedral, City, and the Long Reinvention

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stuart166axe at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In 1914, just as Europe stumbled into war, the parish church of St Mary the Virgin was elevated to become Chelmsford Cathedral on the creation of a new Essex diocese. A century later, on the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II in June 2012, Chelmsford received its letters patent as a...

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Image: Stuart166axe at English Wikipedia | Public domain