Colchester

Layer Marney Tower is a Tudor palace, composed of buildings, gardens and parkland, dating from 1520 situated in Layer Marney, Colchester, Essex,... England. Constructed in the first half of the reign of Henry VIII, Layer Marney Tower is in many ways the apotheosis of the Tudor Gatehouse, and is the tallest example in Britain. It is contemporaneous with East Barsham Manor and Sutton Place, Surrey, with which latter building it shares the rare combination of brick and terracotta construction. The building is principally the creation of Henry 1st Lord Marney, who died in 1523, and his son John, who continued the building work but died just two years later, leaving no male heirs to continue the family line or the construction. What was completed was the main range measuring some three hundred feet long, the principal gatehouse that is about eighty feet tall, an array of outbuildings, and a new church.
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The Colchester Community Stadium, known for sponsorship reasons as the Weston Homes Community Stadium, is an all-seater football stadium, the home of... Colchester United. The stadium was built at Cuckoo Farm, on the northern outskirts of Colchester, with work beginning in July 2007, ready for the 2008–09 season. The stadium has a capacity of about 10,000, with potential to increase to 18,000, and cost £14 million, largely paid for by Colchester Borough Council and Colchester United, with additional grants from the Football Foundation, the Communities and Local Government and the East of England Development Agency. It was named overall winner in the 2009 RICS East of England Awards. The stadium is within 1/4 mile of Junction 28 of the A12, which opened in December 2010. The site contains more than 600 parking spaces and two synthetic surface football pitches, for use by the Colchester United Community Sports Trust. The complex encompasses a variety of sporting, leisure and business facilities, including hospitality suites. On 12 June 2008, Colchester United revealed a ten year sponsorship deal with Weston Homes, worth up to £2 million to sponsor the new stadium.
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Jumbo Water Tower is a local name for the water tower at the Balkerne Gate in Colchester, Essex. The tower was nicknamed "Jumbo" after the London Zoo... elephant as a term of derision in 1882 by Reverend John Irvine who was annoyed that the tower dwarfed his nearby rectory. Construction took around 20 months and was completed in 1883. 1,200,000 bricks and 819 tons of stone and cement were used in the construction of the tower. The tank is constructed of cast-iron bolted panels and when it was in use could hold 1069 cubic metres of water. Jumbo was claimed at the time to be the second largest water tower in England. Inside the central pier are 157 steps to a cupola which at 35.37 metres above ground offers views a long way over Colchester and the surrounding area. After a century of service the water tower became superfluous to the water supply system and was sold off by Anglian Water in 1987. It has had multiple owners since. In 2001 after prolonged controversy permission was granted on appeal to replace the tank with a glass walled penthouse, but work on this never started and permission expired.
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Elizabeth Jane "Beth" Goddard is a British actress. She grew up in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex and attended Clacton County High School and the Rose... Bruford College in Sidcup from 1986 to 1989. She met her husband, Philip Glenister, best known for his role as Gene Hunt in TV drama Life on Mars, whilst filming the BBC comedy series Roger Roger in 1996, and also at a birthday party of Jamie Glover. The couple have two daughters, born in 2002 and 2005. In 2006, after nine years together, she married Glenister. Goddard played Belinda Ashton in the ITV detective drama Lewis, broadcast in March 2008. Goddard also starred as Suze Littlewood in the comedy Gimme Gimme Gimme. She appeared alongside her husband in the BBC One drama Ashes to Ashes. One of her first television roles was as unscrupulous yellow journalist Clare Moody in a 1994 episode of the ITV drama Cracker.
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Paul Allender is the lead guitarist of the British extreme metal band Cradle of Filth. At the age of six years old, Allender's father introduced him... to martial arts, which led to a way of life for him and the home which he grew up in. He received his first guitar at the age of fourteen, and played in staggered periods until he was nineteen years old, because his martial arts training was always his first priority. He joined the band as the guitarist in 1992, and stayed until 1996. In 1996, he left Cradle of Filth to join The Blood Divine and to spend more time with his son. In 1998, Allender started another band called Primary Slave. In 2000, just before Primary Slave signed a recording contract, Allender rejoined Cradle of Filth after receiving a call from Dani Filth, along with drummer Adrian Erlandsson and keyboardist Martin Powell on the band's album, Midian. While performing on stage with Cradle of Filth at Bloodstock Open Air in August 2009, a member of the audience used a slingshot to fire a gobstopper at the stage which narrowly missed Dani Filth, but hit Allender on his spine in his lower back.
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Georgina Cates is an English actress of film and television. Born Clare Woodgate in Colchester, Essex, she attended Colchester County High School... for Girls and broke into television acting when she was only sixteen years old, playing the role of the original Jenny Porter on the BBC's 2point4 children. After two series she left the show to concentrate on acting in television drama such as Casualty and The Bill and in low budget films. In 1995, Cates applied for the role of Stella in the film An Awfully Big Adventure but didn't get the role. She returned home, dyed her hair red, and re-invented herself as a 17-year-old Liverpudlian girl called Georgina Cates who had no previous acting experience. When she re-applied for the same role, the casting director hired her. Cates went on to co-star in such films as Frankie Starlight , Illuminata , and A Soldier's Sweetheart . She received critical acclaim for her role as Amanda in the Clay Pigeons with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix.
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Shahin Badar is a singer and songwriter who is best known in Europe and North America for her vocals on The Prodigy’s single Smack My Bitch... Up. It earned her a Double Platinum award. Shahin Badar was born in Colchester, Essex, England to parents from Bangladesh, She spent her formative years growing up in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates. From a young age, Badar showed a natural vocal talent for music. Inspired by her mother, Zohra Ahmed, and encouraged by her teachers, she developed a blend of Arabic and Indian vocals. This genre is reflected in her music today. With a sound that has now become her trademark Shahin sings in English, Arabic, Bengali and Indian languages. She returned to England to continue her schooling at Gilbert Grammar School. Upon leaving she took up a position in Customs and Excise. Badar’s vocal contributions feature in over 50 international film and TV soundtracks. Her vocals have also featured on shows such as the UK Music Hall of Fame, Bollywood films “Yuva” and “Zubeidaa,” the theatrical trailer for “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life,” “Charlie's Angels,” US sitcoms “North Shore” and “Kevin Hill,” and Sky News broadcasts.
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Darren James Mew , better known as Darren Styles, is a British record producer, disc jockey and singer-songwriter from Colchester, England.... Originally a member of the breakbeat hardcore group DJ Force & The Evolution, Darren found success during the 1990s as one half of Force & Styles. The duo were pioneers of happy hardcore and wrote several well-known songs such as "Heart of Gold", "Pretty Green Eyes" and "Paradise & Dreams". In the early 2000s, Darren Styles began producing more trance-influenced records with Mark Brady as Styles & Breeze. The duo released two hit singles "You're Shining" and "Heartbeatz" which both reached the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart. They have been involved in all volumes of the popular Clubland X-Treme Hardcore compilation series. As a solo artist Darren Styles has released two studio albums, the Gold-selling Skydivin' and Feel the Pressure . He has also frequently collaborated with several other artists such as Hixxy, Ultrabeat and N-Force. Styles was born as Darren James Mew in Colchester, Essex, England.
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Carol Leader is an English theatrical and television actress. She played Sadie Tomkins in Casualty from 1988 to 1989, Barbara Charlton in Young at... Heart from 1980 to 1981 and has also been in Flambards, First and Last, Safe, Peak Practice, and 1992 TV series Kevin and Co. She has also appeared in UK television series including The Bill, Tales of the Unexpected and The Knock. She is perhaps best known, however, to those who were young children in the 1970s and 1980s as a presenter of long running UK children's TV series Play School, and children's TV show Chock-A-Block, which she co-presented with fellow former Play School host Fred Harris. Leader's acting career began at the University of York where she studied History and feature in drama productions, including the role of Charlotte Corday in Y.U.D.S. Marat-Sade production in 1971. Despite a successful stage and television career, Leader eventually quit acting and now works as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Ealing, London, and is a senior member of the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy and a senior associate of Management Training Company, Maynard Leigh Associates.
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