Basildon, located just south of Billericay and north of the marshy banks of the River Thames, is a town that seamlessly blends the old and new. With a history stretching back thousands of years fused with the twentieth century modernism of the new town, Basildon’s hybrid fabric has long made it an interesting and desirable locale. Nestled in the southern edge of Essex, the strip of Basildon South is flanked by marsh and grasslands, from the Vange Creek to the Pitseahall Fleet. With a diverse array of housing stock - from bungalows to mid-century terraces - averaging at around £300,000 - Basildon’s regeneration is one of the borough’s top developmental concerns.

Basildon’s history stretches back thousands of years - with the earliest settlement evidence archaeological dated to the Bronze Age, up to 5,000 years ago! Other important excavations have revealed more permenant Iron Age hillforts and settlements, and the surrounding area of Basildon has thought to have been continously settled from around 550 BC. Basildon, Billericay, and other nearby towns were important fixtures in Roman Britain (AD 43-410), and underwent significant Romanisation until their departure in AD 410 paved the way for the Saxon invasion of AD 449. After hundreds of years of invasions and skirmishes, Basildon remained an important fixture in southeast England, and was mentioned in the 1086 Domesday Book for William the Conquerer several times!

It continued in this vein over the course of the centuries; until everything changed following WWII. The New Towns Act of 1946, the revolutionary town planning act that allocated space for the creation of new towns across England, designated Basildon to be one of the new towns! In fact, most of the development initially was focused around Pitsea and Vange, important elements of Basildon’s southern strip, with the first residents moving to the new town in 1951 based in Vange!

Basildon has been making strides to regenerate much of the suburban fabric of the town, including the town centre renewal scheme helmed by Iceni Projects which aims to construct over 2,000 new homes in the town centre. However, development to the south of Basildon has been slow in recent years since the new town expansion. This is mainly due to the marshland directly south of areas such as Vange. The marshland provides ecological barriers and systemic risks - such as floodrisks - which prevent development further south of Basildon. However, recent planning permissions by large-scale developers have proposed new estates of over 600 homes in the Vange area, currently waiting for approval!