Thurrock
Local History Society: 21st September, 07
At the first meeting of the season, Georgina
Phillips gave a lively and informative talk to a
large audience, on the Legends of Old Leigh. She
spoke of the history of Leigh from the Bronze Age
and Saxon times through the Middle Ages and on to
the 19th century. In early days there was a ship
building industry as well as a fishing fleet and
there were well organised smuggling operations
taking place in the creeks of Leigh, first
recorded in 1275. In the 17 1800s the
fishermen of Leigh, like other citizens, were
burdened with the window tax, the hearth tax and
contributions to the upkeep of the roads so to
augment their income they smuggled rum, gin,
brandy, tea, coffee, linen etc. The Peter Boat
pub was the centre of the smuggling trade with
tunnels built under ground to hide the contraband.
In 1749 the town had
a visit from John Wesley spreading the word about
his non-conformist church. The fishermen saw him
on the wall shouting to the wind but
they liked what he had to say and subsequently
several Wesleyan chapels were erected.
There were many more tales including Sarah Moor,
a sea witch, who told fortunes with the aid of a
pan of salt water and sand, and of Dick Turpin
who was involved in the smuggling trade before he
became a highwayman and the press men
who hounded young boys and men to join the navy.
Thurrock
Local History Society Meeting 19th October, 07.
Over eighty members and visitors came to hear an
illustrated talk on the Barking Fishing Fleet by
Mark Watson of Valence House Museum at Dagenham.
He described how Barking had been associated with
fishing since the Middle Ages when it was
compulsory to eat fish on Fridays. The fisherman
were good navigators and could possibly be needed
in time of war at sea so Queen Elizabeth I made
it compulsory to eat fish on Wednesday as well.
In Victorian times, the
owner of a Barking fishing fleet, Samuel Hewitt,
developed a boat called a Well Smack, which had a
central well filled with sea water to keep the
fish alive. Later ice was used to preserve the
fish and the fishing fleet was kept at sea for as
long as eight weeks at a time while smaller,
faster boats collected the catch and ferried it
off to Billingsgate. The Hewitts built an
enormous ice house which stored enough ice to
keep the whole fleet going throughout the year.
Over 200 fishing vessels sailed from Barking by
the 1850s and the people of Barking were
dependant on industries that related to fishing
such as shipwrights, cask makers, sail makers,
waterproof clothing etc.
At the end of the 1850s
fishing docks had opened at Grimsby and other
ports on the east coast which attracted the
Barking fishermen and by 1862 the Hewitts had
relocated most of their fleet and within a few
years almost all the related fishing industries
had left the town. The association with fishing
is commemorated to this day by displaying a Well
Smack on the arms of Barking and Dagenham.
Thurrock
Local History Society Meeting 23rd November, 07
A large
crowd came to hear the ever popular Peter
Lawrence who gave an illustrated talk on the
villages of East London. He began by explaining
that the river Lee used to be the boundary
between Essex and the county of Middlesex which
bordered on the City of London. Twenty three of
the villages in that area are now in the London
Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Stratford to Bow
road was the main highway from Essex to London
and all the farm produce and animals proceeded
along this route into the London markets.
At the village of Mile End there was a milestone
which marked one mile east of the boundary of the
City of London at Aldgate. Mile End had a toll
gate so that all who passed through to London had
to pay towards the upkeep of the road.
During the 18th century rich merchants
moved out of London and built fine houses along
the Bow Road but eventually they moved further
into Essex and in the 19th century the
houses were turned into shops.
Other
villages referred to included Stepney Green, the
Isle of Dogs which was mostly inhabited by
shepherds and sheep, Limehouse, Poplar, Shadwell,
Spitalfields, and Bromley by Bow. The
churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor, assistant to Sir
Christopher Wren, were described and also the
story of the Huguenots, the Protestant immigrants
from France who developed the silk industry in
the East End. This talk included many
interesting anecdotes of life in the 18th
and early 19th centuries before the
villages had been swallowed up by the growth of
Victorian London.
Thurrock
Local History Society Meeting 14th
December, 07
Roger
Dorking, the guest speaker at the Christmas
meeting, entertained the audience with tales of
life as the son of a blacksmith who worked at the
smithy at Witham. Apart from shoeing horses at
the smithy, the blacksmith repaired farm
implements and made cold horseshoes
to keep in stock. He knew the size of the
hooves of his clients so well that
when he received a message that a horse needed
to be shod he could visit the farm with the
preformed shoe, to save the farmer bringing the
horse into town. As a young boy,
Roger visited many farms with his father,
covering a radius of 25 miles around Witham and
coming as far as Brentwood. Although he
understood why his father enjoyed the life, he
also witnessed occasions when he was injured by
being kicked after momentarily losing his grip on
the hoof. For this reason, he decided not
to follow in his fathers footsteps, so when
he left school, Roger worked on the farm at
Cressing Temple, famous for the mediaeval barns.
A quiz on local history, won by Mrs Musson, a
raffle with an abundance of prizes which raised
over £100, and an appetising buffet, supplied by
members, rounded off a very convivial evening.
Thurrock
Local History Society Meeting 18th January, 2008
Guest
speaker, Linda Rhodes, dressed in the Victorian
costume of 1846 complete with poke bonnet,
related the gory tale of the brutal murder of P C
George Clark, a 20 year old police constable who
had recently transferred from the East End of
London to the village of Dagenham. One
night in June he went missing and was searched
for extensively; four days later he was found
battered to death, in a cornfield at Eastbrookend
in a most fearful state of decomposition,
shockingly mutilated and covered in blood.
In those days the constables were equipped with a
sword and a cutlass and yet this strong young man
had been overpowered and cruelly murdered, it was
concluded, by more than one assailant.
A reward poster offering a £100 for information
that led to the conviction of the offenders was
posted around Dagenham, Ilford, Romford etc.
Although there were several suspects and at one
stage, a trial, nobody was convicted and the
mystery remains unsolved. A book on the
subject, The Dagenham Murder, co-authored
by Linda Rhodes, won the Crime Writers
Association Non-fiction Gold Dagger Award of 2006.
Thurrock
Local History Society Meeting 22nd February, 2008
At the
February meeting, James Ross, Conservation
Adviser for Thurrock Council, gave an illustrated
talk on the conservation of buildings and open
spaces. He explained that in this area buildings
range from Grade I listed, mostly parish churches,
to the humble red telephone kiosk listed Grade II
Group Value (GV). There are seven conservation
areas; Fobbing, Old Corringham, East Tilbury,
West Tilbury, Horndon-on-the-Hill, Orsett and
Purfleet. Some buildings such as the Powder
Magazine at Purfleet and the Fort at Tilbury are
rated as Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAM).
The
church of St Mary at Corringham was given as an
example of a Grade I building, the nave being
Saxon and constructed from local stone plus it
has a late Romanesque window in the tower.
Contrasted with this were the flat-roofed houses
of the Bata industrial village, listed Grade II
GV and the Grade II Bata factory, both considered
internationally important.
There are 240 listed buildings in Thurrock
including the well-known Woolmarket and the Bell
Inn in Horndon. In Orsett, apart from many listed
buildings, the earthwork known as Bishop
Bonners Palace is rated SAM. Church walls,
hedgerows, trees and footpaths are important
clues in dating the landscape. Belhus Park at
Aveley is the only open space in Thurrock listed
under the advisory category Registered Park or
Garden (RPG). Among the twentieth century listed
buildings in Thurrock are the State cinema, Grade
II*, in Grays, and the Baggage Hall at Tilbury
Riverside Station, Grade II, both with Art Deco
interiors.
Thurrock
Local History Society Meeting 14th March 2008
At the
March meeting, Susan Yates gave a wide-ranging
talk on the curiosities of Essex illustrated by
photos taken on her many explorations throughout
the County. She began with the story of the 7th
century St Peters Chapel at Bradwell-on-Sea
built by St Cedd using the stones of a ruined
Roman fort. Several roadside war memorials were
shown including the distinctive sculpture of a
Mosquito aeroplane commemorating the 121 young
men who flew from Bradwell Bay aerodrome and
never returned. The talk included the round
houses of Essex such as those at Canvey, Rayleigh
and Finchingfield, the wooden church at Greensted,
near Chipping Ongar, the memorial in St
Clements churchyard, Leigh-on-Sea
commemorating the fishermen who lost their lives
after taking part in the rescue of allied forces
stranded at Dunkirk in 1940. Also the round
church of St John the Baptist, built by the
Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem in
the 14th century, one of only five round churches
in the country. There were other interesting
sights, such as the Borley Rectory said to be the
most haunted house in Essex, which all gave an
indication of the unusual aspects of the county
of Essex.
Thurrock
Local History Society Annual General Meeting 18th
April 2008
The
meeting began with apologies being recorded and
the minutes of the AGM 2007 being agreed. There
followed the Chairmans Report which
outlined the activities during the past year
including the visit to Bletchley Park,
Dickens Day at Rochester and the Houses of
Parliament plus the Societys attendance at
Horndon Feast & Fair, the Party in the Park
and the Orsett Show. She also gave a summary of
the winter meetings which were very well attended,
and of the speakers who had informed and
entertained us..
There
followed the Treasurers report and the
election of Officers and committee members. There
being no new nominations for Officers or members,
the committee was re-elected en bloc. In view of
the rising cost of speakers and of hiring the
hall, the committee suggested raising the
subscription from £7.50 to £9. It was suggested,
from the floor, that it would be simpler to make
the subscription £10 and this was agreed by a
majority vote of the members.
After a
break for refreshments, Kathy Ostler gave a
nostalgic talk on her childhood in Wales and
London during the war and Dennis Parker told us
about the visit of a group of members of the St
John Fellowship who travelled to Jerusalem to
join in the celebrations for the 125th
Anniversary of the founding of the St John Eye
Hospital. The hospital is the major provider of
eye care in the region and is supported by the
funds raised by members of the Order of St John.
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