Clacton-on-Sea possible invasion beach-head for Napoleon and his Dutch allies. There was a large army and militia camp where Holland-on-Sea now stands. In 1810 5 Martello Towers were built there to guard the beaches between Jaywick and Holland. Clacton was still a small village and a few outlying hamlets when the Essex railway engineer Peter Bruff, the steamboat owner William Jackson, and a group of businessmen built a pier and hotel there in the 1871. In the 1880s the Great Eastern Railway reached it, and it grew into the largest seaside resort between Southend and Yarmouth, with some 10,000 people by
Clacton-on-Sea across to Calais until the early 1960s. Butlins returned after the war. This, the building of the nearby chalet town of Jaywick, caravaning. and the movement of retired Londoners into the area, largely transformed the town from being an East Anglian resort into an extension of East London. In 1964 the town was in the national news when Moped Mods and motor-bile Rockers clashed on the sea front and arrests were made. Since around 1970 several well-known local buildings have been demolished, including the Art-Deco 1930s Odeon Cinema (an architectural loss to the town), the Warwick Castle pub, the Waverley