Posts Tagged ‘Thorney Bay Army Camp’

Canvey Island Guide Book & Flying Fortress Propeller Images

Posted: June 13, 2012 by BTP Joe in Various
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Hello everyone! It’s been a while since our last post because we’ve been busy with the stall in which we made a satisfying profit on the day. We met loads of wonderful people and many people bought our Canvey Island Documentary DVD, including our local MP, Rebecca Harris. You can buy yours now, here!

After an hour or so of scanning an old Canvey guide book, the page by page images can be seen in the gallery below! Canvey was seen and promoted as a holiday spot quite thoroughly over the past century but particularly in the early 1900′s when a popular man, Frederick Hester, was on the scene. (Read more here) Hester spent hundreds trying to re-vamp England and extensively promote it to Londoner’s; a place where they could go to breath sea air. Hester started to build a pier (which was planned to be 3 stories and bigger than Southend pier) and of course the Winter Gardens Tram line. Hester Unfortuantly became bust though and later died in 1934. Below are the images of the booklet. Image 1 is page 1, Image 2 is page 2 e.t.c (Hover over the image to view what number!! Sorry they’re not in order, WordPress is being stupid!!)

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As well as these images I also have a few more delights with thanks to Shirley Gartshore! ;) Below are images of the B17 Flying Fortress propeller which belonged to the plane which crashed at Canvey Point. You can read a very detailed account by Janet Penn here.

And now one last picture but this time a slightly different one. This photo below shows a crashed lorry but in the background on the right, we can see the Thorney Bay War defences from Tuesday 14th June 1977. If you zoom in and look just behind the lorry, you can see a long building which is the army huts in the Thorney Bay Camp. That’s all from me for now and expect a post by BTP Liam soon! I would like to ask please, for you support, in supporting myself in a competition that I recently entered. All you need to do is click the link here and watch the vid!

Tuesday 14th June 1977

Canvey Island – Our Little Thames Town

Posted: May 17, 2012 by BTP Joe in Event Review, Local Event, Other Websites/Organisations, Up-Coming Event, Website Update
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Wow, a lot of tags!! “Canvey, our little Thames town” is probably going to be the most iconic BTP words that you’ll ever hear! On June 3rd 2012 Liam and I will be down the sea front as part of the Town Council Diamond Jubilee event. The event is  a giant picnic event, where everyone can bring a bite to eat, or visit the local food shops and sit down and listen to the band music play! With confirmation from the various choirs, it’s guaranteed to be a great day out for all the family! The event times are 1pm until 6pm and it’s being organised by the town council; Geraldine Vallis in particular. But wait…..it gets even better!! Beyond the Point will be there! We could say it in posh terms “Visit our exclusive one off, road show!!” We will be in the heritage marquee promoting the website and the work that we do with our own stall which will feature a selection of our top finds (including the Stephens Inks thermometer), our best pictures, and an exclusive DVD which can only be purchased there and then! For all of our budding BTP readers, you can keep an eye on our countdown to the left <<<

Canvey Island Documentary DVD by BeyondthePoint.co.uk

The DVD

With 20+ copies available, make sure you get one! Titled “Canvey Island – A comprehensive documentary” this documentary DVD will feature information, interviews and images from Canvey Island throughout the ages! This 1 hour (approx) DVD will be on sale for £4.99 and it has been filmed in full High Definition! We haven’t done any BTP visits over the past couple of months as we’ve been out every weekend filming this and this weekend will be the last, with Liam just needing to do a final interview! We’ve been all over the island and after hours of filming and editing it will finally be ready! You can view the trailer below! You can also keep up with us via Twitter and Facebook!

That’s all from us, make sure you visit us on the day!

Get your DVD!!

Thorney Bay Army Camp – More Remains plus Rare Pictures!

Posted: March 23, 2012 by BTP Liam in Event Review, Other Websites/Organisations
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Hello all. Last weekend Joe and I visited Thorney Bay Army Camp again, and were pleased with our finds. You can see the previously covered surviving remains here http://beyondthepoint.co.uk/2011/12/13/thorney-bay-army-camp-remnants/ . This time we ventured into the camp and found another magazine (ammunition store_ like the one from last time. This one had metal grates over the holes in the walls, and one wall was painted white – it was in use as an electrics building or something similar.

Magazine

And we also found the hexagonal indentations in the sea wall. Pillboxes originally used to be here – when the wall was built/upgraded to the one we know it today in the 70s and 80s, these pillboxes were so tough their concrete couldn’t be easily destroyed. Instead the foundations of the wall were built around the buried pillbox (most remain embedded under the seawall today).

Courtesy of Canvey Archive (canveyisland.org)

Next up are some pictures I found over at the formidable resource ‘SEAX’ at http://unlockingessex.essexcc.gov.uk. This site featuresa map with literally the exact location of every Roman coin, old boat, or WW2 pillbox throughout Essex, along with pictures for a few of them. I found these incredible pictures (http://unlockingessex.essexcc.gov.uk/uep/custom_pages/monument_detail.asp?content_page_id=89&monument_id=23615&content_parents=48,61,79) which I don’t think have really passed anyone’s attention before, and were taken in the 1990s by Fred Nash, an owner of the site. They show colour pictures of the remains of the camp in the final days – here are a select few:

Troop Housing

A sad sight - a probable pillbox

PLEASE LOOK AWAY NOW
A pillbox gets its head smashed - half a loop-hole can be seen

A probable underground air-raid shelter for the camp - my dad remembers this in the 70s

Excellent, although painful to watch, pictures. For all the pictures from our trip go here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.370837339605136.85073.238743826147822&type=3

And for our mini-documentary on it, visit here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzU0R67J9hM

 

Thorney Bay Army Camp Remnants

Posted: December 13, 2011 by BTP Liam in Case Study, Event Review
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In the 1940s US and Canadian troops would train and live in England before the D-Day invasions of France, to shorten the journey time/make the assault more effective. This was the main purpose of ‘army camps’ in the Second World War throughout England, and not to house British troops as many may think. Many army camps, however, were built to house those stationed at sea or air defence gun aites nearby. Thorney Bay army camp would have been used to house the British soldiers who would fire/work at the Scars Elbow Sea Defenses (see http://beyondthepoint.co.uk/2011/10/27/scars-elbow-sea-defences-rare-picture/).

I and BTP Joe have passed the area twice, and do promise to return for a thorough investigation. On each of the two quick visits, we have found a total of three remains. The first below is the ‘magazine’ (ammunition storage building). It still had the iron doors attached and several slits to presumably let in light, not to fire out of, as this was not a defensive building. Inside it looked like nothing but a homeless person had taken shelter, due to the several mattresses e.t.c.

The next find is simply a concrete base which was left when the earth was built up around the sea wall in the 1970s/80s. This would be where the ‘tower’ was from the camp. We now know that this the remains of an entrance to an underground area for pipes area built in the 60s as the sluice connected to Anglian Water (search the site for more info). My father remembers seeing this entrance amongst undergrowth as a child.

The final find was from our second trip, and used to have this building next to it (photo courtesy of Dave Bullock)

Long lost to 2009

Here it is, the very nice rusty looking telephone cable pole. This was attached to the communications building seen above, but was demolished in 2009 before we were into this hobby. It is an excellent landmark and reminder of the area’s proud past.

Finally, I would love to wish you all a Merry BtP Christmas, and announce that a Christmas Eve treat is to be released on Beyond the Point, being an interactive entirely new feature…

H.P. Fielder’s 1930 Map of Essex

Posted: November 21, 2011 by BTP Joe in Case Study, Various
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Hello, I was fortunate enough to be able to have a look a map of Joe’s aunts, with the name  ’H.P. Fielder’, one of Canvey’s most well known World War 2 characters (who owned Thorney Bay including the army camp, and many other placed on the Island, plus he was a member of Canvey’s governance – read more here ‘http://canveyisland.org/page_id__625_path__0p22p.aspx‘), written on it in ink. We took it to the Bay Museum and came to the conclusion it was a hunting map (hence the ‘Essex union’ cover, and that it displayed numbered hunt spots, and the boundaries of their hunting license. We then took it to Janet Penn, who runs and contributes to Canvey’s archive (www.canveyisland.org). She came to further conclusion that someone, probably Fielder, had got the map on printed paper, and divided/segmented it up into pieces, and glued it on canvas, which then was placed in the Cover, and the coordinates were manually added by and in ink. It also has someone else’s writing on it, which appears just to be calligraphy practice.

 

 

 

 

This shows the exact location of the Kynoch Hotel, marked simply as 'Hotel'

Scars Elbow Sea Defences – Rare Picture

Posted: October 27, 2011 by BTP Liam in Case Study, Various
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In the Second World War, a German invasion was imminent. Thousands of pillboxes and defenses were built in almost every town across England. With Canvey being the start of England’s first line of defence, otherwise known as the GHQ line, this was were defenses were most strongly built. Canvey defended us from the invader entering through either ‘the Ray’ (the water where Hadleigh and Canvey are separated, from the old french word ‘Reigh’ meaning water body or river), and the Thames estuary, entering straight into London. We were more heavily armed than you may realise, in fact more heavily defended than most other towns. One gun emplacement that would defend the sea was the emplacement at Scars Elbow, very close to Deadman’s Point, situated in Thorney Bay.

Sited on Scars Elbow Point, this battery was constructed in 1940 to guard against forays by torpedo boats. A twin 6-pounder gun turret was installed and “although hand-loaded, a mounting could deliver a stream of aimed fire at over 100 rounds a minute in the hands of a skilled detachment”, a necessary requirment to cope with fast-moving boats. The battery never saw action and was dismantled soon after the war

Just a week ago, by father was looking through my uncle’s photo album, and found a picture of himself in 1977 as a boy sitting on the old creek wall, with the Scars Elbow emplacements in the background. This was a first evr photograph of the emplacement, and really is a momentous find. We can see that the gun housing seems to be similar to pillboxes, but taller, with struts coming out of the top, and slits at the very top of the structure’s sides. It also features dark rectangular areas of concrete in its sides, and an entrance by way of a doorway  shielded from being directly open with a ‘walk-in’ small porch.

They can be seen in the background, along with other details of the emplacement if you look carefully.

Also, here is a scan from the book ‘Fortifications of East Anglia’ of a diagram showing the layout of the emplacement along with the defence boom in, which doesn’t remain at the time of the photo.

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