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Mistley Towers is a pair of polygonal brick towers dating from the eighteenth century, located in the parish of Mistley in Essex. Built in the 1770s as part of an ambitious scheme by the entrepreneur Richard Rigby to develop Mistley as a fashionable spa town, the towers originally flanked the entrance to a church designed by the architect Robert Adam. The distinctive structures are constructed of red brick and rise to a considerable height with pyramidal roofs, representing a notable example of Georgian commercial architecture adapted to domestic and ecclesiastical purposes. Though the church they adorned no longer stands between them, the towers themselves remain prominent landmarks and survive as evidence of the eighteenth-century aspirations to transform this Essex locality into a place of resort and refinement.
Mistley Towers is a scheduled monument protected by Historic England under reference 1002154. View the official record →
Mistley Towers is a pair of polygonal brick towers dating from the eighteenth century, located in the parish of Mistley in Essex. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic England (NHLE) under reference 1002154.
Mistley Towers is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Historic England (NHLE) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in England. The official designation reference is 1002154.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Site of Old St Mary's Church (1.6 km), Neolithic enclosure 510m north-east of Lawford House (2.9 km), Ring ditches SW of Reed Island (3.1 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Mistley Towers's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Mistley Towers stands on Thames Group, bedrock that formed in the Eocene. The rock here is clay, silt, sand and gravel.