Walking past these bungalows you wouldn’t think anything of them – they’re just someone’s average home, but the buildings are far from average, they were supposedly built to withstand an atomic explosion. Following the end of the Second World War, in 1946, plans were submitted to build ‘atomic bungalows’ on Canvey Island. Whilst this was…
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What now stands as a strange overgrown mound of earth piling high into the sky, squeezed behind a car park near Rayleigh high street, was once the site of a Norman motte-and-bailey castle. Rayleigh Castle, or Rayleigh Mount as it is sometimes known, was recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086 and was the only…
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The history of the garrison dates back to 1849 when the land was first purchased by the Board of Ordanance. Woolwich Common was usually used for testing weapons, although as they became more powerful, they needed a new, larger site. During the Crimean War, the Royal Artillery School of Gunnery was established at Shoeburyness and…
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Only a handful of Iron Age sites still remain in England, with most lost to nature and seemingly destroyed over time. If you walk around the back of an industrial estate in Chelmsford, you’ll come across a rare surviving enclosure which is thought to date back 3000 years to 1000-700BC. Evidence suggests that the site…
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In the years leading up to the Second World War the Government ordered the production of hundreds of thousands stretchers. They were built using two metal poles and wire mesh as metal would be easier to clean and disinfect and would be sturdier than wooden or fabric stretchers. Some 600,000 were estimated to have been…
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Photographs above are from HadleighHistory.org.uk in an article written by local author and Historian Robert Hallman The oldest house in Benfleet as it has been known was formerly a ‘poorhouse’, which we would interpret as a government-funded structure that would support those in poverty and provide them with housing. Whilst ‘poorhouses’ include the treacherous workhouses…
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In the fallow land directly South-West of Fossets Way, Prittlewell, lies an impressive Bronze or Iron Age circular hillfort dating from somewhere between the 8th to 5th century BC. The 250 meter-in-diameter fort is extremely rare and of national importance; it is designated a scheduled monument. It would have been a fortified settlement containing domestic…
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Winchester Palace was built in the 12th-century and served as the London townhouse for the Bishops of Winchester. The Bishop of Winchester was a major landowner in Southwark, in Surrey, and he traditionally served as the King’s Royal Treasurer, performing the function of the modern Chancellor of the Exchequer and therefore had to frequently meet with…
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Valence House is an old manor house in Becontree, Dagenham. It is the last survivor of Dagenham’s five manor houses. Whilst the Becontree estate of many miles of houses cropped up almost entirely as a ‘homes for heroes’ housing scheme for Great War veterans and their families in the 1920s, the area was once originally…
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What is Hadleigh Iron Age Roundhouse? Hadleigh Country Park is open to a whole host of historic sights – from the widely-popular Hadleigh Castle to the hidden remains of a heavy anti-aircraft battery and the Salvation Army home colony. One such tucked away treasure is the replica Iron Age roundhouse located behind the Olympic Park…
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