From 2024 to 2026, Liam Heatherson of Beyond the Point has been working on a heritage project for the Borough of Castle Point; comprising Canvey Island, Benfleet, Hadleigh, Thundersley and Daws Heath. It began as part of the community arts project This Is Us by Metal Culture, in partnership with the Estuary Festival and funded by Castle Point Borough Council. Liam was approached to lead a creative project and bring together the Canvey Island, Benfleet and Hadliegh & Thundersley Community Archives which was centred around the area’s heritage, encouraging its residents to consider how its past has informed its present culture and landscape as well as potentially informing its future development. This resulted in several meetings with the Archives, as well as the designing of three walking trails which tell the story of how the modern area developed at its genesis loosely around a century ago. It resulted in presentations to several local Scout groups where some early documentary footage of the trails was shown, as well as talks from the archives about local history more generally and a creative activity involving creating cyanotpe photographic prints from old postcards of local places.
As footage from the walking trails was gathered and edited together, Liam began to write and research a script for a documentary film in order to create something more permanent from the This Is Us project and put the collective efforts with the Archives together into a final outcome. It was an opportunity to revisit the area where Liam and Joe had first found their love for local history and built heritage and create a high-quality documentary about its history – something that seldom happens with such a localised focus. It was intended to be a classic documentary film inspired by those made across the past 60 years, providing a ‘slice of life’ insight into an area’s culture and buildings. Efforts were made to include as many of the area’s historic buildings and key locations as possible so that it will serve as a document of how the area looks today for decades to come.
The film was drafted up for a This Is Us exhibition in March 2025, but then added to and refined over the course of the year after which it had truly taken on a life of its own and far outgrown the initial funding. It took over a hundred hours of work and was ultimately a passion project. The documentary concluded with a showing in March 2026, kindly organised by David Hurrell of the Hadleigh and Thundersley Community Archive at the Hadleigh Old Fire Station, a whole year after the first draft was shown. It was attended by numerous archivists, artists, councillors and dignitaries and was a resounding success.
The film focuses on three main storylines just over a century ago, going back to a time when the settlements of Canvey, Benfleet and Hadleigh were about to rapidly evolve at the turn of the twentieth century and become the largely residential area that Castle Point is today. This all began due to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, which abolished tariffs on imported grain in order to combat famine. However, it did mean that arable farmers now struggled to sell their grain for a decent price, and farms all across the country began to sell their land off cheap. This quiet corner of Essex was situated along the newly constructed London-Tilbury-Southend railway line, with Benfleet and Leigh stations being opened in 1855, and developing roadways connecting holidaymakers from the capital to Southend. It was an inbetween-zone of quaint rural countryside, woodland, and marshes, and the cheap farmland was highly appealing for urbanites wishing to establish plotland-style retreats or for developers with larger visions. Hester, Booth and Varty were three indivudals who purchased this cheap land, each with their own visions for the area, and form the basis of the three trails of the film.
The Canvey trail follows the vision of Frederick Hester, who began buying up the island’s farmland from 1897 with an aim of turning the island into an idyllic tourist resort that would draw Londoners in, who then might purchase his land for residential development. His project went bankrupt in 1905, but it marked a shift in the modernisation of Canvey’s infrastructure and development, as well as paving the way for interwar developers Fielder, Fisk and Hartfield whose bungalows are visible across the island today. The trail runs from Waterside Leisure Centre and up to Waterside Farm at the Benfleet crossing, before turning south-east along the path of the old seawall believed to roughly follow the path of Hester’s monorail running parallel; Canvey’s first public transport system. This passes through the Wintergardens area which Hester developed into an area of attractive greenhouses and tearooms for tourism and supplying markets such as Covent Garden in London. His monorail then ran south-east close to Central Wall Road, Smallgains Farm and the High Street before reaching a small pleasure pier he constructed at Leigh Beck near Seaview Road. The trail also looks at the area of Tewkes Creek where Hester planned to build a power station for the electrification of his monorail, and was intended to be the location of some form of crossing approximately over to the Salvation Army jetty in Hadleigh.
This brings us onto the Hadleigh trail, which follows the development of the Salvation Army Colony on the Downs to provide destitute Londoners with a rural retreat and employment in brick-making and agriculture. This began with the purchase of Sayers Farm, Castle Farm and Park Farm by William Booth; founder of the Salvation Army, in 1891, as well as Templewood Farm, Belton Hill Farm, and other subsequent purchases. The trail begins at the Hadleigh Olympic Mountain Bike Park at Sayers Farm in the west, also the site of one of the colony’s brickworks, before heading east past Seaview Terrace to Castle Farm where the Salvation Army tearoom, offices and Rare Breeds Centre is today. The trail then heads down the hill past the western side of Hadleigh Castle, past the site of further brickworks, before crossing the London-Southend railway. The trail passes an original brick bridge for the Salvation Army narrow gauge railway to cross the London-Southend railway, now the C2C, before reaching the ruins of the jetty and wharf used by the Salvation Army to export their produce and bricks to London via barge.
The third trail begins at Jarvis Hall in Thundersley; where businessman Robert Varty lived from 1890, selling former farmland from Tarpots in the north down to Benfleet Creek in the south to Londoners until he died in 1921. He was instrumental in the residential development of the area, and the trail follows a loop around South Benfleet from Essex Way up to the water tower, west down Vicarage Hill to Benfleet High Road, and south through the Conservation Area around Benfleet Creek, completing the loop behind Benfleet railway station. This trail looks at the area’s most prominent historic buildings, many providing a glimpse to a Benfleet prior to its residential development, but also covering much of the land formerly owned by Varty.
The documentary also includes a short feature on Daws Heath and Thundersley villages, as well as snippets of other notable locations and Victorian and twentieth-century buildings in Castle Point not directly linked to the trails. Every notable building in Castle Point may not quite make an appearance the film, but it likely includes the vast majority! The result is a 37-minute documentary film which can be viewed above or on our YouTube pages. A huge thank you must be given to the Canvey, Benfleet, and Hadleigh & Thundersley Community Archives for their material and support throughout the project. It has been the culmination of a 15-year long relationship developed with them and a fascination with local heritage that we are proud to release for viewing.
Be sure to watch the full documentary yourself at the top of the page, and visit the Canvey, Benfleet, and Hadleigh & Thundersley Community Archive websites.