Places to explore near Colchester

Largest Norman keep, built on a Roman temple.

0.2 km N

Constable's own valley of slow river, water meadows and old mills on the Suffolk and Essex border, made for a gentle day

6.8 km N

The influential 'right plant, right place' gardens created from gravel and bog at Elmstead Market, with famous dry, woodland and water gardens.

7.1 km E

Near Colchester, this large Essex reservoir is of international importance for wintering ducks, geese and swans.

8.2 km S

Tidal Essex island reached by the Strood causeway, with West Mersea's oysters and beach huts and Cudmore Grove country park

9.5 km S

The elegant Stour-side village at the heart of Constable country, its wide High Street of Georgian houses and inns still framing the scenes the painter knew.

9.9 km NE · Essex

Village pub in the Dedham Vale on The Good Food Guide's 100 Best Pubs.

10 km NE

England's tallest Tudor gatehouse in brick.

10.4 km SW

A Stour-valley wool village of timbered houses whose tall church tower, painted repeatedly by Constable, rides the ridge above Dedham Vale.

11 km N · Suffolk

A Constable-country dining pub with rooms, named Suffolk's best pub in the 2020 guide.

11.2 km N

The mill and cottage of Constable's Hay Wain.

11.5 km NE

A 1932 seafront lido in Brightlingsea, the last in Essex, rescued and run by volunteers since 2018.

12 km SE

A no-frills West Mersea seafood shack famous for its oysters and platters, where diners bring their own bread and wine.

12.1 km S

Island village pub on Mersea, listed among Britain's 100 best.

12.6 km S

Constable's birthplace at the heart of Dedham Vale, its church famed for a rare timber bell cage housing the bells at ground level.

12.6 km NE · Suffolk

Shingle beaches, reedy estuaries and gorse heaths along a soft, low-lying coast made for gentle walking

12.8 km NE

A Blackwater wool town thick with timber-framed houses, from the Tudor merchant's Paycocke's to a medieval tithe barn beside the abbey ruins.

14.7 km W · Essex

A single steep street of colour-washed and timbered cottages dropping to a watersplash ford across the stream, with a hilltop church at the top.

17.8 km N · Suffolk

Two vast medieval timber barns built by the Knights Templar near Braintree, among the oldest in Europe, with a walled Tudor garden.

20.9 km W

A slender six-storey Tudor brick folly above the Orwell, arguably the oldest folly in England.

23 km NE

Tall, well-preserved Norman keep with banqueting hall.

23.7 km NW

A Colne Valley village of painted timber houses and two old inns clustered below its Norman keep.

23.7 km NW · Essex

A scenic Orwell-side hamlet of Thames barges and mud berths, immortalised by Arthur Ransome, with a waterside pub.

24.2 km NE

A long Stour-valley village with two great houses, a brewery and one of the finest wool churches in East Anglia at its northern end.

24.3 km NW · Suffolk

A turreted Tudor mansion behind the green, once visited by cousin Beatrix Potter.

24.7 km NW

Round Norman arches of reused Roman brick, left from one of England's first Augustinian priories.

0.2 km S

Late medieval gatehouse faced in flint flushwork, the last standing part of St John's Abbey in Colchester, and scarred in the 1648 siege.

0.4 km SW

A country park in Essex.

1.2 km N

A National Trust place in Essex.

1.4 km S

Across rural Essex from Epping to the port of Harwich, through Constable's Dedham Vale and a string of medieval villages.

3.9 km NW · Essex

Twenty acres of private gardens at Ardleigh near Colchester, mixing Japanese, gravel, water and woodland planting.

6 km E

An English wine estate on the Stour border near Dedham, with vineyard tours, tastings, events and countryside stays.

7.3 km N

Newmarket to the estuary at Cattawade down the Suffolk Stour, finishing among the scenes Constable painted in Dedham Vale.

8.3 km NW · Suffolk, Essex & Cambridgeshire