Essex: Forget the jokes. Here are 20 reasons to celebrate

Britain's most maligned region has advertised for a marketing supremo to promote its charms worldwide. Jonathan Brown examines his home county's claims to fame

1: Colchester

1: Colchester

According to Pliny the Elder, this is Britain's oldest town. He records a settlement in his Historia Naturalis of 77AD as 200 miles from Camulodnum - named after the war god Camulos. Claudius made Colchester his capital in 43AD. The Trinovantes of Essex didn't like it and joined Boudicca's revolt in 60AD, razing the city. The capital of Britain then moved to London. Colchester's city wall remains, ranking it in archaeological importance alongside Europe's walled cities like Avignon and Orange. Campaigners claim it is under threat through neglect.

2: Salt

Salt-making has been going on at Maldon for 2,000 years but its mild, crumbly crystals have enjoyed renewed acclaim after being featured by a series of celebrity television chefs, including Delia Smith, as a "must-have" cupboard accessory.

3: Jamie Oliver

The young Jamie Oliver learnt his trade at his dad's pub, the Cricketers, in Clavering, close to Stansted Airport.

4: Shellfish

With 300 miles of coastline, Essex offers some of the finest seafood in Britain. A cockle fleet still operates out of Leigh-on-Sea and the catch is best savoured with a beer in one of the Old Town's pubs. Colchester oysters, farmed according to traditional methods on the river Blackwater, are a highly sought-after delicacy on the Continent and are being assessed for designated regional status alongside Parmesan cheese and Parma ham. The Company Fish Shed at Mersea Island has a permanent queue. Customers must bring their own wine and bread.

5: The A13

Few counties can have had much of their road network immortalised in song. But Billy Bragg, the self-styled bard of Barking, advised motorists that their best way eastwards from Wapping to Shoeburyness was to take the A13 - "the A-road, the OK road that's the best". Chris Rea, however, was less complimentary about the county's main motorway link - the M25 - which he considered "The Road to Hell".

6: Canvey Island

Canvey Island may be better known for its views of the Shell Haven oil refinery, roundabouts and windswept panoramas. But a brownfield site off the island's Northwick Road has recently been hailed as "Britain's rainforest" after it was discovered it had greater biodiversity per square foot than any other site in the UK. Among the 30 endangered invertebrates it plays host to are the Brown-banded carder-bee ( Bombus humilis), and the weevil eating wasp Cerceris quinquefasciata.

7: Ford

The sprawling Ford plant at Dagenham in Essex - described by George Orwell as a "vast new wasteland of glass and brick" - is now one of the greenest factories in Europe. Car production has ceased but three giant wind turbines, measuring 85m, and designed by Sir Norman Foster, have sprung up to power the remaining industry there. One houses a viewing platform open to the public.

8: Ian Dury

The singer-songwriter Ian Dury was born in Upminster in 1942, the son of a bus driver.

9: Dedham Vale

Dedham Vale in the Stour Valley on the Essex-Suffolk border was one of the primary sources of inspiration for the landscape painter John Constable, who was born on the north side of the river. Constable, who now ranks alongside Turner and Gainsborough, painted many scenes in Essex, including Hadleigh Castle, near Southend.

10: Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore was born in Dagenham in 1935, the son of a railwayman. He attended Dagenham County High School before winning a music scholarship to Oxford. His celebrated double act with Peter Cook followed Beyond the Fringe, which laid the foundation stone for Monty Python's anarchic brand of humour. He eventually became a Hollywood star after appearing in Blake Edward's 10, alongside Bo Derek. He died in 2002.

11: Beth Chatto

Beth Chatto's gardens took root at Elmstead Market, near Colchester, in 1960. Attempting to live by her maxim of only growing plants suitable for the local conditions, she turned an area of Essex wasteland comprising dried-up gravel and boggy hollows into one of the most celebrated gardens in Britain.

12: US presidents

Not everyone might consider this a cause for celebration, but Messing, a small village near Colchester, can lay claim to producing two presidents of the United States. Reynold Bush and his clan left the village for America in the 17th century. George Bush Snr honoured the village by sending a Stars and Stripes when he became president. He in turn was honoured when the local pub was named after him.

13: Joseph Conrad

Conrad moved to Victoria Road in Stanford le Hope in 1896. There he worked on some of his most acclaimed novels, including Heart of Darkness and The Nigger of Narcissus. His powerful descriptions of the Thames conjure the "vanishing flatness" of its shores and the "mournful gloom" and "brooding motionless" of its skies.

14: Des res

With their windmills, weatherboarded houses and pargetting, the villages and towns of north-west Essex are among the most sought-after in the London commuter belt. Grade II-listed thatched cottages around Great Dunmow fetch upwards of £500,000. One of the best ways to see the countryside is to walk the 81-mile Essex Way, which meanders through some of the finest villages, between Epping and Harwich.

15: Southend-on-Sea

Though lamented by Morrissey as the "seaside town they forgot to pull down", Southend-on-Sea became a magnet for East Enders with the advent of the railways. To offer them something to do, the town's Victorian forefathers built the longest pleasure pier in the world. Stretching a mile and a third into the tidal mudflats of the Thames estuary to ensure that a bit of it was always in the water, it has caught fire three times since 1976, and in 1986 was rammed by a passing ship. But its glory days are back. The electric railway is fully operational again and a new lifeboat station and glass and steel pier entrance have been constructed. For those who like their seaside a little less raucous, there is genteel Frinton.

16: Dick Turpin

England's most famous highwayman was born in the heart of the Essex countryside in 1706, possibly in Thaxted. Popular folklore portrays Turpin as a flamboyant, almost likeable figure, particularly after he teamed up with the "dandy highwayman" Tom King. But scholarship reduces him to a common, violent criminal, at times ruthless and on more than one occasion bumblingly incompetent. He was hanged at York racecourse in 1739.

17: Rebellions

Brentwood was the starting point for the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, one of the most dramatic events in British history. Furious at the activities of a local tax collector, the men of Essex marched on London, camping at Aldgate on the edge of the City. Rebellions had meanwhile spread to other counties, and Kentish men were camped at Blackheath. The Essex rebels met King Richard, who acceded to their demands for an end to serfdom. But the rebellions were crushed and the architects of the rebellion were dealt with ruthlessly.

18: Trial marriages

The Dunmow Flitch Trials date back to 1104. Held every July, couples from all over Britain compete to prove that they have the ideal relationship, appearing before a mock court to convince the judge and panel that they have not spoken a cross word to each other in the past 12 months. Their reward for such devotion? A flitch, or salted side of pork.

19: Gustav Holst

Holst lived in the village of Thaxted between 1917 and 1925. Much of the orchestration for his composition The Planets Suite was sketched out during his time at his cottage there. In 1916 he helped to initiate the Whitsuntide Festival, held in the village's church.

20: Chigwell

A modern-day association with the television comedy series Birds of a Feather hides a more literary heritage. Charles Dickens featured Chigwell in his novel Barnaby Rudge, and its pub, the King's Head Inn, is believed to have inspired the Maypole, the hostelry in the story.

Dickens said of the town: "Chigwell is the greatest place in the world ... such an out-of-the-way rural place."

An estuarine paradise

By Martin Newell

As you enter Essex, traveller,

Those three seaxes on that sign

Mean you are in Saxon country

And, just for the record, mine.

Essex, sneered at and derided

Home of Dazzas, Lees and Jays

Where the oil-drizzling classes

Never come for holidays:

"Doesn't seem to know polenta."

"Yes, well, he's from Essex, dear."

What - you mean the home of writers

Ronald Blythe and Germaine Greer?

Where our schools do rather better

Than the city's, year-on-year?

Must be that benighted county

Where we drink St Ella beer

Where the A12 threads its magic

Where the shopping mall's the grail

Which you metro-snobs ho-hum at

When you travel up by rail

To your pied-a-terres in Suffolk

Walberswick (via Darsham station)

Essex, England's driest county

Prettier than its reputation

Here beside the jigsaw coastline

Out along the water's edge

Seagulls, waders, geese and moorhens

Sea-kale, samphire, gorse and sedge

Further in, the houses, hidden

Flemish roofs and weathervanes

Where the woodland ponds and copses

Huddle out of sight of trains

Essex with its secret accent

Not the one that's Estuarine

Not the older London Essex

Nor quite Suffolk - in between

Where it's spoken pure and simple

Noticeably rural - alien

It may sometimes be mistaken

By a stranger for Australian.

Essex, great for writing, painting

Artists like the coastal light

Do we need to be made over?

I don't think so. Someone might.

Bring the cultured world to Essex?

Yeah, go on, we've got the stuff

Wheel the oil-drizzlers in then.

If they think they're hard enough.

Martin Newell, The Independent's poet, grew up in Wivenhoe, Essex. He still lives in the county.