Jaywick: Essex man's (not quite) Barbados

A visit to the most deprived neighbourhood in England contrasts charm and poverty

I have just come home from another of my trips around Britain capturing areas that are economically impoverished or socially distressed. It was hard to resist a trip to the single most deprived neighbourhood, Jaywick on the North Sea coast of Essex, just beyond the Thames estuary. For once, I will recommend the BBC article on the town as a good place to start to get context. It was never conceived of as a permanent settlement, and did not emerge from an obvious geographic feature like a port. I consistently find that I cannot anticipate the “aura” of a place from a map or online description; I have to walk the streets. This was no exception, and quite eye-opening.

I am not an ethnographer, historian, or anthropologist. What I can do uniquely well is relate my own personal experience of a place, and what it triggers for me. Jaywick in some ways is the antithesis of Savile Town in Dewsbury, which has less than 1% of the population being White British, whereas in Jaywick the figure is 97%. Being “the only native in Yorkshire” at the former reminded me of being the only white person on a bus in Barbados in my late teens. But the shacks of Jaywick, under the midsummer sun and beside the sea, equally reminded me of the poorer areas in Barbados away from the resort areas.

As a child, we repeatedly went to Barbados on holiday as (for us) it was cheaper than going camping in England. My father worked for British Airways as a mechanic, so we got very cheap or free standby air travel, and before they added taxes to flying. We stayed out of season in self-catering accommodation, with an airline staff discount, and brought one suitcase of food items from home that were expensive to purchase locally as imports. This was back in the 1970s and 1980s, when there were only two 747-100 flights a week from London via Antigua, and before true mass tourism began. Being unable to afford a rental car, we took local buses and walked.

Jaywick started as a tourist destination, so the parallels are not entirely idle. The holiday homes built in the 1930s became permanent residences far later. Many reminded me of the extremely modest accommodation (but not squalid) in Barbados way back, where the maids might live. This is the nearest thing to a shanty town that exists in Britain, where your options are limited by the need to find shelter from damp, dull, and windy winters. It is undoubtedly the most economically challenged place I have been to in my British travels, but not the most depressing, and indeed has a certain charm to it.

Closer to London it is nearly unheard of to see dereliction — the last of the WW2 bomb sites was cleared ages ago, and land is too expensive to go fallow. Jaywick is a ten minute bus ride from the end of the line from London into Clacton, a 90 minute train journey, so beyond what the typical commuter will withstand. The main reason to be here is to not be somewhere else; it is defined by its escape from the bombed-out East End of London and the desire not to return after a holiday at the seaside. Just the domestic tourist market died back with the advent of cheap air travel, and Jaywick was left semi-lifeless.

There’s a lot of rubbish around, and the only place where I have found flies to be an issue.

It’s a hotspot for crime and there are CCTV cameras everywhere.

Around 40% of the population is elderly, and there are many disabled people.

Electric scooters are all over.

The economics of the place are “stressed”.

At the end of the day, a place is made by its people, not its buildings or businesses.

Alive and gone…

It would be one-sided to focus on only the dilapidation of Jaywick. There are many properties with spectacular personalisation, a kind of creative freedom you rarely see outside of the outlaws in squats or hippie communes.

It’s quite a child-friendly location with no through traffic, ideal for feral youth.

It would also be remiss not to mention the beach… it may not be the Caribbean, but it’s not so far off.

These fringe areas are having a resurgence of national consciousness and resistance to cultural displacement. I felt safe here, welcomed, and could easily imagine coming back.

Ultimately, Jaywick was a pleasant surprise. As this Essex Live article says:

Jaywick has long been named the most deprived area in England, but people living there say they’d never move anywhere else. Residents EssexLive have spoken to have said the coastal village is essentially run by the community, with informal groups taking on responsibility for helping those in need – and it’s that community spirit that makes them proud to call it home .

Danell Dreelan has lived in Jaywick for the last 15 years and raised all five of her children there after moving from Tottenham to be nearer her mum. Now she helps run Sonny’s Army, a community group dedicated to helping sick children and those needing medical care in the area since 2019. The mum says she has never found anywhere quite like Jaywick and that the community spirit is unrivalled.

Having walked through some grim neighbourhoods recently, I have to agree there’s an attraction to this place, despite its material lack.

Barbados has an image of being the ultimate luxury destination, while having an underbelly of poverty that most don’t get to see. Jaywick as the (ironic) “Barbados of Essex” has an image of being one of the worst places to live in England, but actually has a lot going for it. Its asset is its people, their Essex-ness, and its English eccentricity.

If nature wills it — the area is prone to incursion from storms and flooding — I can imagine that this place could have a resurgence. It may seem its best days are inevitably in the past, but that is the “end of history” illusion. Changing circumstances, renewed localism, and public preferences could see a swing back towards this kind of location and “free range” living experience.

It may not be Barbados in Essex, but then again, neither is Essex in Barbados. I came away with an appreciation for a place that is actually rather special and precious — every bit as much as Barbados is, in its own way.