Ferro-Concrete barges were used to keep artificial ‘Mulberry Harbours’ afloat used by the allies in D-Day as checkpoints in the English Channel. One was thought to have drifted off of the broken Mulberry harbour that lies out in the Thames opposite Shoebury/Southend. Using our Time Tool below, you can see then and now photos of…
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Share your memories with us by commenting at the end of the article! Now lying derelict with overgrown grass, collapsed ceilings and smashed windows, this building once held over a thousand students and staff. With the building getting older year on year and student numbers on the up, the school packed up its bags in…
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When Beyond the Point was first established in 2011, we started investigating some strange patterns on Upper Horse Island, situated to the west of Canvey Island. They appear to be the same colour to the marsh surrounding, but are clearly shaped by humans, it being square, with circles and lines inside. This lead us to…
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Photos from Dave Bullock. Above ground photo by Nick Catford. Nick Catford from the amazing site Subterranea Britannica visited the site in 1997, 1998, and 2000. He records: When first inspected in 1997 the post was in reasonable external condition with all surface features intact but with some land erosion around the access shaft. The…
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It’s the birth place of Beyond the Point; a location that intrigued and mystified us. The massive site is hidden away on Canvey Island and has been derelict since the 1970’s. Resembling an apocalyptic city-cum-European forest, gridded roads and the occasional lamppost amongst what can be rightfully called Canvey’s jungle serve a reminder of the…
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The Canvey Island Monster has been classed as a ‘cryptid’ – an unidentifiable species of creature, inline with the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot, as a few examples. In November 1953, a strange marine creature was washed up on Canvey at the beach, soon after the Canvey Floods. It was described as being 73cm/2.4ft in…
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In the Second World War, access to the River Thames was controlled by two defensive ‘booms’. The first at its very mouth ran from Shoeburyness to Sheerness, whilst the second lesser-known but still substantial boom ran from Scars Elbow Battery on Canvey Island to St. Mary’s Bay in Kent. This was a kind of floating…
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Canvey’s list of historic pubs have declined over the years, most have been converted into retail space (Silver Jubilee and the King Canute) however the Jellicoe hasn’t been fortunate enough to survive. The pub, and once a hotel, is thought to date back to the late 1920’s or early 1930’s and even survived the floods of…
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Sometime roughly around 1622, a Canvey land owner known as Sir Henry Appleton called upon expert Dutch engineer Cornelius Wasterdyk Vermuyden to reclaim Canvey’s constantly flooding marhsland. Whilst it is traditionally thought that Vermuyden was directly responsible for Canvey’s reclaimation as he was other parts of England’s south-east coast, it is now thought that an…
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‘Canvey 2000’ was an attempt to rejuvenate Canvey Island’s seafront in 1997, hoping to restore it to reflect some of the glory as a tourist resort, centred around Thorney bay holiday camp and beach, which it had seen from the 1900s up until the 1980s. It saw some success and definitely revitalised the seafront into…
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