The first broadcast anyone was meant to hear came from Chelmsford
- World’s first wireless factory, Hall Street, 1899
- New Street Works from 1912
- Dame Nellie Melba broadcast, 15 June 1920
- Heard as far away as Newfoundland
How Chelmsford grew
A wireless factory, then the first broadcast anyone was meant to hear.
The world’s first wireless factory
Guglielmo Marconi opened it in Hall Street, employing about fifty people to build equipment for a technology most people did not yet believe in.
Marconi, and the first broadcast anyone was meant to hear
Guglielmo Marconi opened the world’s first wireless factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, in 1899, employing about fifty people to build equipment for a technology most people did not yet believe in. The company outgrew it and moved to the purpose-built New Street Works in 1912.
On 15 June 1920 that factory transmitted the first officially publicised sound broadcast in Britain: Dame Nellie Melba singing, carried on two 450-foot masts, and picked up across Europe and as far away as Newfoundland.
Everything that followed — radio, television, mobile, wifi — is the same trick performed at higher frequencies. Chelmsford is where Britain first sent something through the air on purpose for an audience.
What that means if you trade in Chelmsford
Chelmsford is a commuter city with money and very little patience: a large share of the population is in London by nine and back by seven, and they buy services in the evenings on a phone.
That shapes what a website has to do here. It must answer everything without a phone call, because the phone call is the thing your customer does not have time to make.
What Chelmsford businesses ask us for
Sell to people who are elsewhere all day
Evening and weekend availability is worth stating plainly. So is an enquiry form that works at 11pm.
Cover the villages
Great Baddow, Writtle, Danbury, Ingatestone. Chelmsford’s money lives around it as much as in it.
Price it on the page
A time-poor, well-paid market filters fast and does not ring to ask.
The county town that broadcasts
Chelmsford is the county town of Essex and, since 2012, a city. Its economy is a professional one — insurance, financial services, law, engineering consultancy and the local government administration that comes with being the county seat — layered on a commuter base with a fast line into Liverpool Street.
The Marconi inheritance is more than a plaque. The city built radio equipment for most of the twentieth century, and the engineering and electronics skills that came with it still shape what kinds of firms are here: instrumentation, defence electronics, telecoms and the consultancies around them.
Anglia Ruskin runs a Chelmsford campus alongside its Cambridge, Peterborough and London sites, which keeps a student population and a graduate supply in the city rather than exporting both to London.
Where people work
A professional services centre with an engineering past that has not entirely gone.
Anglia Ruskin, Chelmsford
One of the university’s main campuses, keeping graduates and a student economy in the city centre rather than sending both to London.
The professional core
Insurance, finance, law and consultancy, plus the county administration. A buyer who reads carefully, expects credentials, and compares against London suppliers they already know.
The London line
A fast service into Liverpool Street means a large commuter population with London-shaped expectations and weekend-and-evening local spending.
Essex Chambers of Commerce
The county business network — worth knowing in a market where professional referral does a lot of the work.
How Chelmsford businesses use their sites
A professional market with commuter expectations. People here are used to well-made London websites and will judge yours against those rather than against the shop down the road — which is unfair, and true, and worth building for.
Credentials matter more than in most towns this size. Registrations, professional bodies and insurance details being easy to find is not box-ticking here; it is what the local buyer checks first.
Professional services
Name your people, list your accreditations, and be specific about what you do. Vagueness reads as inexperience to this audience.
Trades and home services
Say which areas you cover — Great Baddow, Springfield, Writtle and Broomfield are separate places to residents.
Clinics, salons and studios
Online booking is assumed, and evening slots matter because a large share of customers get home after seven.
Shops, cafés and hospitality
City-centre and retail-park trade behave differently. Hours, location and parking on the page.
Why FastSites works here
The city that carried the first broadcast anyone was meant to hear is a reasonable place to argue that reaching people clearly beats reaching them elaborately. One page, saying what you do, loading immediately.
Published price, live in days, built mobile-first. Tell us which parts of the city and the villages around it you actually serve.
How well do you know Chelmsford?
Five quick questions. Get all five right and you win a 10% off discount code for your website. Every answer is somewhere on this page, so have a read if you get stuck.
Chelmsford quiz · 1 of 5
What did Marconi open in Hall Street in 1899?
Common questions
The simplest one-page site starts at £15 a month, with the website build included and nothing to pay up front. Every plan and its price is published on the pricing page before you speak to anyone.
Sign-up takes about 3 minutes and the build questionnaire about 5. Most sites are then designed and built within 21 hours, and live within days of the brief being answered.
No setup fee and no hidden extras. Your monthly plan covers the website build and hosting. Done-for-you plans have a 12-month minimum term, then you can cancel any time from your dashboard.
Yes — you can upgrade at any time as your business grows, with no need to start over.