fordable at low water; and from this ford, and the alders still growing near it, the parish had its name. It is in two manors, Alresford and Cockayne, both now held by Mrs. Mary Higginbotham, of London, and formerly by the Fercle, Staunton, Tabor, Cockayne, and other families. Most of the soil belongs to other proprietors, the largest of whom is W.W. Hawkins, Esq., of Alresford Hall, which stands on an eminence, and has lately been much enlarged. Mr. Hawkins is the lessee of the manors.." The Tendring Hundred Railway, later owned by the Great Eastern Railway, cut Alresford in half, slightly north of Wivenhoe Road in 1866, with a station built that's still standing. Engineer in chief was Peter Bruff, who then built the Clacton to Thorpe line and created Clacton-on-Sea as a holiday resort from 1871. There were three or four trains a day between Colchester and Walton; with Sunday services only in summer. In 1959, the line was the first in the country to be electrified at 25kV AC overhead line collection; previous systems had exclusively used lower-voltage DC traction. On Saturday 12th August 2017, the steam locomotive "Tornado" journeyed between London and Walton-on-the-Naze to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the line carrying 2000 passengers. On 15 March 2018, the line was closed by a landslip a few hundred metres east of the station A further line of miles (8 km) was opened in 1866 along the River Colne linking Wivenhoe and Brightlingsea via a 430 foot long iron, swing-bridge over Alresford Creek. This became GER bridge number 1035, was of 10 spans and sat on 4 foot diameter (1.2 metre) cylinder piles. The bridge was normally left open two hours either side of high water unless a train was coming. Otherwise two men had to row from the north side of the Creek where a boat-house and cottage in 1895 (since demolished) were located and manually move the bridge. Initially, trains had to keep to a 10 mph speed limit, but this was cut to only 5 mph due to the later state of the bridge. The line being built on soft clay embankments and wooden trestles only three feet above the high tide level was prone to flooding. This it did in 1874 and 1876. The embankments were raised, but the line flooded again in 1882. During Black Friday of 1897 a train trying to