Tilbury Riverside: On the grey northern banks of the Thames, just before the estuary opens up to the sea, lies the historic town of Tilbury. It's home to one of the three largest container ports in Britain, and the only commercial survivor of the outward expansion of London's docklands in the 19th century. Huge ocean-going ships sail in daily to unload their cargoes, and vast acreages of unsold shiny cars cover the quayside. It's all screened-off and rather ugly, at least until you make your way a mile out of town to the one remaining accessible stretch of river frontage. There used to be a major train terminus down here until the 1960s, back when this was London's main passenger liner terminal. Thousands emigrated to Australia through its portals, and 60 years ago the Empire Windrush docked here heralding the beginnings of Commonwealth immigration. It's rather quieter these days. The terminal now hosts only the occasional deep water cruise and the notoriously unreliable GravesendFerry, while the railway line is used only by freight. There was no ferry service on Bank Holiday Monday, just a deserted locked-off jetty (so no chance of escaping to Kent). Business was unexpectedly buzzing at the World's End pub, appropriately located at the end of a bleak mudflanked cul-de-sac. A few yards further along the river wall, however, was my intended destination.
Tilbury Fort: How best could the Kings and Queens of England prevent enemy boats from sweeping up the Thames to capture London by force? A large militaryfort at Tilbury, that's how, guns poised ready to sink any advancing maritime threat. Henry VIII built the first defensive structure here but it was Charles II who instigated the impressive star-shaped structure still to be seen today. It's essentially pentagonal, with diamond-shaped bastions poking out into a series of concentric moats. Alas you don't get any sense of the geometric splendour of the site by visiting, that's only evident from the air. But the front entrance - a decorative Water Gate - is mighty impressive, and there's plenty more to see inside.
Entrance costs only £3.70 (very Thurrock prices, I thought), and with your ticket you get a push-button audio tour and free rein to explore the site. Out across the parade ground for starters, or up onto the bastion wall to look out over the concentric moats and wooden drawbridges protecting the fort from land-based attack. Younger visitors will enjoy scrambling over the earth banks and grassy peaks labelled "do not climb", even though English Heritage might wish they didn't. One especially well-preserved building is the East Magazine, used for storing thousand stacked-up barrels of gunpowder. It's surrounded by an additional curtain wall to limit the possibility of serious blast damage - risk management is certainly no 21st century invention. Elsewhere you can go down into the dark storage tunnels of the north-east bastion, these a later addition to the fort, or climb up onto the gun positions overlooking the Thames. Blam! Pow! Gotcha!
And yet, for all its impressive fortifications, Tilbury Fort never really earnt its keep. No enemy gunboats ever made it this far up the Thames, and the only wartime action was the shooting down of a single WW1 Zeppelin. And so the fort survives, battling on against a regular invasion of Essex dads, spray-tanned mums and their bloated runaround offspring. The Spanish Armada was surely nothing in comparison.
Tilbury Riverside: On the grey northern banks of the Thames, just before the estuary opens up to the sea, lies the historic town of Tilbury. It's home to one of the three largest container ports in Britain, and the only commercial survivor of the outward expansion of London's docklands in the 19th century. Huge ocean-going ships sail in daily to unload their cargoes, and vast acreages of unsold shiny cars cover the quayside. It's all screened-off and rather ugly, at least until you make your way a mile out of town to the one remaining accessible stretch of river frontage. There used to be a major train terminus down here until the 1960s, back when this was London's main passenger liner terminal. Thousands emigrated to Australia through its portals, and 60 years ago the Empire Windrush docked here heralding the beginnings of Commonwealth immigration. It's rather quieter these days. The terminal now hosts only the occasional deep water cruise and the notoriously unreliable Gravesend Ferry, while the railway line is used only by freight. There was no ferry service on Bank Holiday Monday, just a deserted locked-off jetty (so no chance of escaping to Kent). Business was unexpectedly buzzing at the World's End pub, appropriately located at the end of a bleak mudflanked cul-de-sac. A few yards further along the river wall, however, was my intended destination.
Tilbury Fort: How best could the Kings and Queens of England prevent enemy boats from sweeping up the Thames to capture London by force? A large military fort at Tilbury, that's how, guns poised ready to sink any advancing maritime threat. Henry VIII built the first defensive structure here but it was Charles II who instigated the impressive star-shaped structure still to be seen today. It's essentially pentagonal, with diamond-shaped bastions poking out into a series of concentric moats. Alas you don't get any sense of the geometric splendour of the site by visiting, that's only evident from the air. But the front entrance - a decorative Water Gate - is mighty impressive, and there's plenty more to see inside.
"I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm." (Queen Elizabeth I, Tilbury, August 1588)Entrance costs only £3.70 (very Thurrock prices, I thought), and with your ticket you get a push-button audio tour and free rein to explore the site. Out across the parade ground for starters, or up onto the bastion wall to look out over the concentric moats and wooden drawbridges protecting the fort from land-based attack. Younger visitors will enjoy scrambling over the earth banks and grassy peaks labelled "do not climb", even though English Heritage might wish they didn't. One especially well-preserved building is the East Magazine, used for storing thousand stacked-up barrels of gunpowder. It's surrounded by an additional curtain wall to limit the possibility of serious blast damage - risk management is certainly no 21st century invention. Elsewhere you can go down into the dark storage tunnels of the north-east bastion, these a later addition to the fort, or climb up onto the gun positions overlooking the Thames. Blam! Pow! Gotcha!
