St. Mary’s is located at the top of the hill in Benfleet highstreet. After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, a small church was built on the site of the current one (c.1067). Its western wall still forms part of the church today. In the 1100s the church as we know it was built…
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Located in the heart of Billericay, Norsey Wood is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) with history spanning the centuries. Discoveries such as a Neolithic axe head and a Roman cemetery are just a couple of finds to be looked into, following the first investigation in 1865 by J E K Cutts, with…
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Warley Hospital was the first County Asylum to be built in Essex, following the passing of the County Asylums Act. The first patients were first admitted in 1853; 130 out of a capacity of 300 although by the turn of the century the site had expanded and accommodated just short of 2,000 patients. Psychiatric Hospitals…
View More[vc_row][vc_column][gallery_lemongrid images=”21188,21211,21200″ cell_height=”120″ space=”5″ element_id=”1515077895267-9a9ac8e6-d326″ template=”{“template“:“gallery_lemongrid.php“}”][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_column_text]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…
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Moated sites are as the name suggests – wide ditches full of water that would have surrounded an island which would have had a domestic or religious building on it. They were mostly built during the medieval period around central and eastern England, often to show wealth and status in the countryside. The Howbury moated site…
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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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If you happen to be walking past the orangutan enclosure at Colchester Zoo, keep an eye out for the ruins of the All Saints’ Church. Although a church or temple had existed on this site since the Roman era, the current church was built in the late 13th century, used to serve Stanway Manor, which…
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Down Canal Road in Strood lies these anti-tank defences. Built at the start of the Second World War, they were intended to slow down any tanks trying to get onto British soil. On the battlefields, anti-tank traps would have lead tanks and other military vehicles down specific routes where they would encounter mines and other…
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We visited Oozedam Farm in January of 2018, on a trek across Fobbing Marshes which saw us head from the farm to discover a lost explosives factory, bomb craters and much more. Starting here, we knew that there was a pillbox on the old farm and possibly even the remains of a Spigot Mortar or…
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Welcome to a happy and adventurous New Year from the BTP boys. We’d like to introduce a very special piece of kit that Joe has been learning to use – a drone of course. First of all, the drone enables us to film historic sites from a new aerial perspective, but it also allows us to…
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