Tour Through the Eastern Counties of England

Tour Through the Eastern
Counties of England

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England
by Daniel Defoe (#5 in our series by Daniel Defoe)
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Title: Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722
Author: Daniel Defoe
Release Date: July, 1997 [EBook #983] [This file was first posted on

July 10, 1997] [Most recently updated: May 21, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TOUR
THROUGH THE EASTERN COUNTIES ***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected]

Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722

I began my travels where I purpose to end them, viz., at the City of
London, and therefore my account of the city itself will come last, that
is to say, at the latter end of my southern progress; and as in the course
of this journey I shall have many occasions to call it a circuit, if not a
circle, so I chose to give it the title of circuits in the plural, because I do
not pretend to have travelled it all in one journey, but in many, and
some of them many times over; the better to inform myself of
everything I could find worth taking notice of.
I hope it will appear that I am not the less, but the more capable of
giving a full account of things, by how much the more deliberation I
have taken in the view of them, and by how much the oftener I have
had opportunity to see them.
I set out the 3rd of April, 1722, going first eastward, and took what I
think I may very honestly call a circuit in the very letter of it; for I went
down by the coast of the Thames through the Marshes or Hundreds on
the south side of the county of Essex, till I came to Malden, Colchester,
and Harwich, thence continuing on the coast of Suffolk to Yarmouth;
thence round by the edge of the sea, on the north and west side of
Norfolk, to Lynn, Wisbech, and the Wash; thence back again, on the
north side of Suffolk and Essex, to the west, ending it in Middlesex,
near the place where I began it, reserving the middle or centre of the

several counties to some little excursions, which I made by themselves.
Passing Bow Bridge, where the county of Essex begins, the first
observation I made was, that all the villages which may be called the
neighbourhood of the city of London on this, as well as on the other
sides thereof, which I shall speak to in their order; I say, all those
villages are increased in buildings to a strange degree, within the
compass of about twenty or thirty years past at the most.
The village of Stratford, the first in this county from London, is not
only increased, but, I believe, more than doubled in that time; every
vacancy filled up with new houses, and two little towns or hamlets, as
they may be called, on the forest side of the town entirely new, namely
Maryland Point and the Gravel Pits, one facing the road to Woodford
and Epping, and the other facing the road to Ilford; and as for the hither
part, it is almost joined to Bow, in spite of rivers, canals, marshy
grounds, &c. Nor is this increase of building the case only in this and
all the other villages round London; but the increase of the value and
rent of the houses formerly standing has, in that compass of years
above-mentioned, advanced to a very great degree, and I may venture
to say at least the fifth part; some think a third part, above what they
were before.
This is indeed most visible, speaking of Stratford in Essex; but it is the
same thing in proportion in other villages adjacent, especially on the
forest side; as at Low