TILBURY: The fort or burgh of Tilla. West Tilbury was the site chosen for the Camp Royal in 1588, where Elizabeth I delivered her celebrated speech to her army preparing for Spanish invaders. Now the site of Tilbury Fort, built in the 1670s as a defence against Dutch incursions along the river. Perhaps the fort of Tilla was situated on the same spot. There was once a Mint here, and the name appears on a coin from the reign of Edward the Confessor. Defoe reported “the whole shore being low, and spread with marshes and unhealthy ground.”
GRAVESEND: It does not mean “end of the grave” where, according to once popular legend, the Great Plague finally stopped. In the Domesday Book it is known as Gravesham, or the town of the Grave, otherwise Graff, the earl or chief magistrate of the neighbourhood. The point of entry to the Port of London, where coastal pilots secede their place to river pilots. In the fourteenth century the watermen here were granted the exclusive right to transport passengers to London. This was once the place of arrivals and departures, where explorers and colonists, transported prisoners and emigrants, were vouchsafed their last glimpse of the land they were leaving. It was at Gravesend Reach that David Copperfield bade farewell to Mr. Peggotty, and where the Micawbers disappeared from sight. A nineteenth-century account of the Thames describes the place as associated with “meetings and partings, with great changes of fortune, with the keenest moments in the drama of life.” The river, from Gravesend and Tilbury to the sea, is known as “the Hope.” So a haunted place, one which Conrad described as having once been “one of the dark places of the earth.” The town pier of 1834 survives still. The town marks the beginning of the Saxon Shore that winds its way to Hastings.
CLIFFE: Called Clive or Cloveshoo or Cliffe-at-Hoo. Also once known as Bishops’ Cliffe, since all the Saxon bishops in the province of Canterbury held an annual synod “in the place which is called Clofeshoch.” It is believed that this represents the first parliamentary system to be inaugurated in England. There was once a thriving port here; from its position upon the cliff, it was a significant location. In 1797 it was reported that “Cliffe seems daily growing into further ruin and poverty, the number of inhabitants lessening yearly and several of the houses, for want of them lying in ruins.” By the nineteenth century it was described as “a lonely, primitive place.” No doubt the ague destroyed the people. So by degrees human settlement disappeared.
ISLE OF SHEPPEY: From the Saxon sceapige, in consequence of the great quantity of sheep bred upon it. Known to Ptolemy as Toliapis. Here, at Minster-upon-Sea, is one of the oldest churches in Britain; it was founded by Queen Sexburga in AD 670. There was originally a temple to Apollo on the same site. For many centuries it was a battleground between the Danes and Saxons. In 832 it was overrun “by the heathen men.” It has not been the same since.
CANVEY ISLAND: The island of Cana’s people. Some 4,000 (1,620 ha) acres of land, once flat marshland. It may be the Convennos or Counos of Ptolemy and other ancient writers. There are extensive signs of Romano-British occupation. In the second century it was the home of salt-makers, whose settlement was destroyed in some natural disaster when the island was submerged. It has always been at the mercy of the sea. At a later date it was an island of shepherds. Then it became the home for a large community of Dutch, who in the early seventeenth century used their skills at reclaiming land in exchange for rights of settlement. A place, in William Harrison’s words, “which some call marshes onlie, and liken them to an ipocras bag, some to a vice, scrue, or wide sleeve, because they are verie small at the east end and large at the west.” In the early nineteenth century it was reported that “only people who cared little whether they lived or died would undertake the farm work on the island.” But the ague disappeared in the middle of the nineteenth century, largely because of improved drainage and the reduced population of mosquitoes. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was described as “the loneliest place in the Home Counties” but a large urban community was developed in subsequent years. It also became a holiday resort for Londoners. The great flood of 1953 killed eighty-three residents.
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