J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > East Anglia, Sussex and Yorkshire 1824 > Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Tower of St Peter's Church, Colchester c.1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Tower of St Peter's Church, Colchester’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 81 Verso:
?Tower of St Peter’s Church, Colchester c.1824
D18298
Turner Bequest CCIX 81a
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 115 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Previously unidentified, this swiftly rendered jotting appears to show the tower of St Peter’s Church on North Hill in Colchester, Essex. The first reference to St Peter’s can be found in the Domesday Book, a manuscript record of the ‘Great Survey’ of England and Wales completed in 1086 under the orders of William the Conqueror.1 The tower depicted in this drawing, however, was constructed in 1763 to replace the original.2 Turner suggests the cornerstones which remain to this day as well as the striking crenellation on the parapet.
1
‘Early History of St Peter’s Church’, St Peter’s Colchester, accessed 29 January 2015, http://www.stpeterscol.org.uk/early.html
2
Ibid.
Technical notes:
A leaf has been torn out of the sketchbook between Tate D18298; Turner Bequest CCIX 81a and Tate D18299; Turner Bequest CCIX 82.

Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘?Tower of St Peter’s Church, Colchester c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-tower-of-st-peters-church-colchester-r1181180, accessed 08 May 2025.