7. It’s home to Britain’s smallest town (but not really)

The curious towns of our quirky nation love an obscure claim to fame. Largest, oldest, highest, furthest from the sea, highest number of residents called “Nigel”. And the settlements of Essex are no different. Manningtree, on the River Stour, is particularly keen to bask in the limelight. It claims to be the smallest town in Britain, with 900 residents, despite being comfortably trumped by the likes of Llanwrtyd Wells (850) and Fordwich in Kent (381).

Sensing defeat, perhaps, Manningtree has also touted itself as the UK town with the most pubs per square mile. In 2008 there were five (or 180 people per pub), but today there appears to be just three: The Red Lion, The Crown and The Skinners Arms (or four if you count the Crown at the Cattawade, across the Stour estuary). Again, there are worthier contenders. More or Less, the BBC Radio 4 programme about numbers and statistics, handed the title to the Welsh town of Rhayader after discovering it had 12 pubs for its 2,075 residents, or one for every 173 people.

Essex’s other claimants to impressive and insignificant records include St Osyth, the driest place in Britain (allegedly), Great Bentley, home to the largest village green in England (perhaps), Southend, with the world’s longest pleasure pier (true).

8. It supplied Britain with the world’s most expensive spice

Pound-for-pound, delicate saffron is the priciest spice on the planet, fetching up to £75 a gram, and during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries England’s HQ for its production was the Essex town of Walden. Its favourable soil and climate supported the growth of the saffron crocus and the tiny crimson threads were sold for use in medicines, food, perfume, as an aphrodisiac, and as a dye. So synonymous was the town with the spice that “Saffron” was added to its name and crocuses still feature on its crest.

Alas, the painstaking harvesting methods meant the town couldn’t compete with cheap imports from Asia and production ceased at the start of the 19th century. Efforts to revive saffron cultivation, a stone’s throw from Saffron Walden, emerged in 2014, however, with an Essex farmer, David Smale, selling his crop to the likes of Fortnum and Mason.

There are plenty of other reasons to visit the town. “It is a riot of Essex vernacular architecture and craft, from the little geometrical patterns scraped into wet plaster on the outside of half-timbered houses, to the pubs, many of which have beautiful gilded wrought-iron signs like something out of The Wicker Man,” wrote Keith Miller for Telegraph Travel a few years ago. “The church is the largest in Essex, we were proudly told as we gatecrashed a seven-priest ordination mass, with free wine and cakes afterwards.”