Linnetts Cottage approx 100m SE of St Peters on the Wall (EHER 38601)

An 18th/19th century small timber framed and weatherboarded cottage, now used as a bird observatory. The building is a rare survival of a marshman's cottage, possibly erected as accommodation for the seaman manning the semaphore signal station during the Napoleonic Wars.

August 1986. Grade II listed. An 18th/19th century small timber framed and weatherboarded cottage, now used as a bird observatory. It has a grey slate roof and a red brick chimney stack. There is an outshot at the rear and to the front. The building is a rare survival of a marshman's cottage, possibly erected as accommodation for the seaman manning the semaphore signal station during the Napoleonic Wars. <1> See photo <2>. A single storey small cottage erected in 1798, as a temporary building, to provide accommodation for the seaman manning the signal station at St Peter's Chapel (see EHER 32). The building, which was prefabricated in a navel dockyard and shipped to this site, has two small rooms with two narrow lean-to rooms and a storeroom. It is weatherboarded with a slate tile roof. It was one of a chain of 10/12 stations in Essex. The only other surviving Essex signal house, though now altered, is at Court End, Foulness (EHER 34995). The cottage is named after the Linnett family who are first recorded there in the 1871 Census. William and his son Walter were punt gunners / wildfowlers. The family continued to live there until the late 1950s. It was used by falconers for a short time and in the 1970s a hostel was erected in the garden to provide residence for members of the Bradwell Bird Observatory. It has been used by them ever since. <3>