Local & Reliable Skip Hire in Halstead.

Local area guide

Skip hire in Halstead

Halstead is a market town in Essex, sitting on the River Colne around seven miles north of Braintree, with a population of around 12,000. Its name derives from the Old English for a place of shelter, and it has been a market town since the thirteenth century. The town is built along a steep High Street climbing away from the river, lined with Georgian and earlier frontages, with St Andrew's Church at the top and the water meadows of the Colne below.

Halstead's defining building is Townsford Mill, a white weatherboarded three-storey watermill straddling the Colne at the foot of the High Street — one of the most photographed buildings in Essex. It was built in the eighteenth century and taken over in 1825 by Samuel Courtauld, who turned it into a silk mill producing the black mourning crape that made the Courtauld fortune during the Victorian cult of mourning. Courtauld's operations at Halstead and Braintree employed thousands, mostly women, and shaped the town for over a century.

The Courtauld family's philanthropy is visible throughout Halstead. They built workers' housing, the Courtauld Homes of Rest — a row of almshouses on Colchester Road — the public gardens and much else, and the family's influence ran through local civic life for generations. The mill closed as a silk works in the 1980s and now houses an antiques centre.

The surrounding countryside is classic north Essex — rolling arable farmland with scattered villages of timber-framed and pargeted houses. Nearby are Castle Hedingham with its magnificent Norman keep, one of the best preserved in England and seat of the de Vere Earls of Oxford; Gosfield Lake; and the Colne Valley Railway, a preserved line running heritage services along the valley.

Halstead sits on the A131 and A1124, with Braintree and Sudbury the nearest railheads — Braintree gives services to London Liverpool Street in around an hour — and the A120 and M11 within reach. Stansted Airport is around 25 miles west. Neighbouring communities include Sible Hedingham, Castle Hedingham, Earls Colne, Gosfield, Greenstead Green and Braintree.

Housing in Halstead ranges from Georgian and timber-framed property along the High Street and Head Street — much of the centre a conservation area with a substantial number of listed buildings — to Victorian terraces built for the Courtauld workforce, interwar and post-war estates, and modern development on the town's edges. Property is more affordable than the south of the county, and Halstead has increasingly drawn buyers seeking a market town within reach of Colchester, Chelmsford and the London commute.