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
St Leonard's Church, St Leonards-on-Sea St Leonard's Church, St Leonards-on-Sea St Leonard's Church is an Anglican church in the St Leonards-on-Sea area of Hastings, a town and borough in the English county of East Sussex. The main church serving James Burton high-class mid 19th-century new town of St Leonards-on-Sea was designed by Burton himself just before his death, and it survived for more than a century despite being damaged by the cliff into which it was built; but one night during World War II, the sea-facing building was obliterated by a direct hit from a damaged V-1 "doodlebug" which had crossed the English Channel. The