Alresford ( or ) is a village and electoral ward in Essex, England. It is centred southeast of Colchester and is northeast from the county town of Chelmsford. The village and its civil parish are the district of Tendring. The local primary school is Alresford Primary School (~150 pupils, ages 4–11) and the village has a pre-school and church. Alresford won the Essex Village of the year competition in 2012 and tied for first place (in its class) for another Essex Village of the Year award in 2019. Population According to national census figures for April 2001, there were 2,125 inhabitants in 842 households, with an almost even gender balance. The percentage of the population above the age of 45 is higher than the national average. The population of the parish reduced to 2,009 at the 2011 Census. Geography The village, southeast of Colchester, lies above Alresford Creek, a tributary to the River Colne. The village's railway station usually sees one service per hour to Walton-on-the-Naze and Colchester. There are also some peak-time services to Clacton-on-Sea and London, operated by Abellio Greater Anglia. The village is on the 62 and 98 bus routes. Services are provided by First Essex. History and culture Some prehistoric finds have been found in Alresford. These include cropmark sites and the discovery of a Bronze Age cinerary urn at Alresford Grange in 1942 by school-girl Anne Pilkington in the remains of a barrow. Shards of a potential Early Bronze Age urn made from coarse flint-tempered fabric were found in a gully at Blue Gates Farm Quarry There were also 52 Middle Iron Age pottery shards (600-500 BC), 87 flints (one Mesolithic, the others Neolithic and Bronze Age tools) and two barbed arrow-heads at Broomfield Plantation. The earliest recorded building in Alresford was a Roman winged-corridor villa, and possibly a bathhouse, that was found in a field 300 yards South-East of Alresford Lodge Farm near to the Creek (TM 0609 1993), excavated in 1885 by H. Laver. The walls had been robbed out but the remaining tesselated corridors and hypocaust showed the villa was 162 1/2 feet long and 10 feet wide. It turned south at a right-angle at both ends. Coins from Faustona and Commodus (161-192 AD) as well as Samian-ware pottery shards are now preserved in Colchester Castle Museum. Plate glass was also found. During the 1920s, ploughing in this field uncovered a large