A NEW festival could be held in Purfleet to celebrate the town’s connection with Dracula.

Bram Stoker’s horror novel, published in 1897, sees Jonathan Harker, a solicitor’s clerk, arrange a house sale in Purfleet for his client Dracula, and a lot of the middle of the novel features the town.

Patrick Prior, a playwright and associate writer at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, hopes to launch the Dracula in Essex Festival in July or August next year, to mark the connection.

He said: “Walk around Purfleet today and it is hard to realise this corner of the county was a major setting for perhaps the most famous horror novel of all time.

“Whitby in Yorkshire has become synonymous with Dracula. It is here the arch-fiend first set foot in England.

“The town has thrived on this association. The Dracula Experience, a Dracula Tour, visits to the Abbey and Goth weekends are all pointers to the tourist kudos to be gained from this association.

“Sadly the dark capester’s sojourn in the town on the River Thames has been largely forgotten.

“But now, perhaps, we should follow the trail of Dracula from the dark forests of Transylvania to this quiet town.”

The festival could see a week of events celebrating Purfleet’s connection with the novel, including a large-scale production of Dracula involving both the community and professional actors, fancy dress competitions, a vampire ball and a cape and garlic race.

Curator of Thurrock Museum, Jonathan Catton, has had meetings with Mr Prior about the festival and is keen for it to go ahead.

Mr Catton is convinced Bram Stoker visited Purfleet, as the town was a popular leisure spot for the Victorians.

He said: “It’s a great to link literacy to local history, even if it is tongue-in-cheek.

“I believe Bram Stoker definitely visited the landscape and buildings of Purfleet – maybe as a day tourist.

“There is also the possibility he was a guest of the Whitbread family, who had a residence in Purfleet at the time.”