This battery is perhaps one of Cliffe’s least well-recognised pieces of ruined defence heritage. The initial Lower Hope Battery was built to defend the Thames Estuary at Lower Hope Point from around 1796, predating the Palmerston Fort defence scheme in the wider area such as Cliffe, Shornemead and Coalhouse Fort by almost 70 years. It…
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Along Salt Lane in Cliffe lies an overgrown pair of air raid shelter tunnels installed to protect industrial workers of the Alpha cement works in WW2. It is suggested that the two shelters remaining today were actually two entrance-ways into a larger shelter capable of holding hundreds of people, although they seem to be of…
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Following intense bombing during the Second World War, Londoners were in need of new homes – and fast. The solution adopted by the Government was a unique scheme which saw temporary homes being built in factories, sometimes by prisoners of war, to speed up the construction process. 1,500 homes were destroyed in Lewisham in the…
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Built close to Dagenham East Station, these anti-tank cylinders were built in World War Two to slow down any German tanks, should they have made it that far. The row of these concrete defences can be seen on Google Maps and spans over 80 metres, with a Type 22 pillbox at the eastern end. On…
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Overlooking the A127 with views spanning from Essex to London, the Grade II-listed All Saints Church has stood semi-abandoned for decades until 2021 when an army of volunteers set about transforming the area to make it more visitor friendly. The current building isn’t the first church to be built on that spot, in fact it’s…
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Silver End is a village in the Braintree area of Essex, constructed in the late 1920s as a self-contained ‘model village’ by Francis Henry Crittall; who established his Crittall Windows factory at the centre of the village. Crittall steel-framed windows achieved international popularity in everything from military buildings to the Titanic. Crittall aimed to provide…
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The plotlands was an area of natural land available for rent/purchase as holiday spots, popular with Londoners who wanted to escape to the countryside. No proper development was really carried out and the residences, pathways, and streets, were the handywork of those visiting Dunton for leisure. It was used as a plotlands site until 1980…
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Parkland Walk allows people to walk along the abandoned tube line between Finsbury Park and Highgate and has been dubbed London’s version of New York’s High Line. The route of the path was originally built in the 1860’s to connect Finsbury Park to Edgware and was officially opened on 22nd August 1867. In the 1930’s, London Underground had…
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SM UB-122 was a World War One German submarine, or U-Boat, in the German Imperial Navy which was first commissioned in March 1918 after a year of construction. The 183ft warship was armed with 10 torpedoes and a 3.46 inch deck gun which would have been operated by the 31 men and 3 officers onboard….
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Tucked away in an isolated field bordered by the A130 and a railway in Shotgate, near Wickford, Essex, lies two memorials constructed in 1920 to a tragic plane crash which occurred on 7th March 1918 at Dollyman’s Farm. The incident occurred at night when the two young pilots were flying from the RFC Rochford and…
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