Team Building in Colchester

King Richard I gave Colchester its first royal charter in 1189 and in 1989 the 800th anniversary of the charter was celebrated by the borough. Colchester has many famed medieval ruins, including the surviving gateway of the Benedictine abbey of St. John the Baptist and the ruins of the Augustinian priory of St. Botolph.

Colchester developed rapidly during the later fourteenth century as a centre of the woollen cloth industry and became famous in many parts of Europe for its russets which are fabrics of a grey-brown colour.

The town claims to have the UK's oldest catalogued market and Colchester is an associate of the Most Ancient European Towns Network. Colchester is noted for its Victorian architecture and significant landmarks include the Jumbo Water Tower and the Colchester Town Hall.

Since 2006 Colchester is one of 12 places in the UK where Royal salutes are fired to commemorate anniversaries and visits by foreign heads of state. From 2009, these salutes have taken place in Castle Park. The town is one of twenty-five across the UK which unsuccessfully applied for city status to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 2012.

The Castle Museum in Colchester Castle, features a vast display on Roman Colchester. Other museums include the Hollytrees Museum, Natural History Museum and Tymperley's Clock Museum housing the Bernard Mason clock collection.

On the cultural front one of the region's main repertory theatres, the Mercury Theatre, opened in 1972. Colchester Arts Centre is a multi-function arts venue occupied in the former St Mary-at-the-Walls church and home of the Colchester Beer Festival. Headgate Theatre is also in Colchester. The Minories, by the castle, accommodates a modern art company called Firstsite and the Visual Arts Facility, designed by Rafael Vinoly, opened in September 2011.

Other than the Arts Centre live music venues in Colchester include The Twist, Charter Hall and The Fat Cat pub. In 2009, an art collective called 'Slack Space' took up some of the closed-down shops in the town and converted them into art galleries with the unrealised hope of promoting art and design in the town.

The Colchester School of Art and Design is situated in the Colchester Institute next to the central part of town, giving prominence to Art in the town which also boasts a zoo on its outskirts.

Colchester is reputed to be the place of origin of three of the best known English nursery rhymes: 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star', 'Humpty Dumpty' and 'Old King Cole' although the legitimacy of the allegations for the first two of these is disputed.

Suggestion is made that because of its ancient name Camulodunum and its once being the capital of Roman Britain, Colchester was a possible area of Camelot.

People born or who have lived in Colchester include: Sir George Biddell Airy, Darren Day and Margaret Thatcher.