This building along Long Road was most recently a health centre, but closed in 2018 and has been sitting disused since. It was once perhaps Canvey’s most substantial civic building, opening in 1934 as Canvey Island Urban District council’s offices. The district was newly created in 1926 when Canvey grew out of the Rochford Rural…
View More
See above the front of the depot in 1990 (Frank Whitnell) and in 2013 The Canvey & District Bus Depot was built in 1934, featuring contemporary Art Deco hard-edged geometric architecture. It was vacated in 1974, by Eastern National, the major primary bus service of the era – now days First dominates Essex’ streets, with…
View More
Canvey Island’s civil defence sirens – used to warn residents of air raids in WWII, potential nuclear bombs in the Cold War, and flood emergencies since the North Sea Floods of 1953, remained installed and frequently tested until around 2014. It is not entirely clear if this siren was from WWII, but even if this…
View More
Tucked away in the Little Gypps area of Canvey Island is a park known as the Gunny/Gunney, and here there was once a WW2 Heavy Anti Aircraft (HAA) battery designated as TN7 Furtherwick (Thames North battery No.7). There were six gun emplacements, four octagonal early-war pits positioned in a semi circle facing east and another…
View More
In the early Second World War – being 1939 or 1940, a total of nine pillboxes, along with other defences and bunkers, were built across Canvey Island. Canvey Island formed the start of the first line of defence against an invasion coming towards Western England from the Germans. This line is known as the GHQ…
View More
Canvey Island was a fairly quiet area in the 1930s, so when it became heavily militarised to defend against air, land, and sea on the approach to World War Two, it must have come as quite a shock. Arguably, this was one of the changes the island saw which transformed it into the town it…
View More
The Canvey Archive has a large collection of memoirs, photographs, and by CloudScout” href=”https://beyondthepoint.co.uk/historic-locations/canvey-island/the-second-world-war/b17-crash-site/#48142577″> shared is here: http://canveyisland.org/documents/DHB_v2_Med_Res.pdf On the 19th of June 1944 a formation of B17 Flying Fortress American bomber planes were heading back to their base in Kimbolton, and it was pilot Lt. Lloyd Burn’s 29th mission. The Heavenly Body II was the…
View More
Two busts that stood in ‘Poets Corner’ of the Winter Gardens, today in the Canvey Heritage Centre. Photographs of Frederick Hester, and his monrail before & after electrification. Also images showing interior of his winter gardens. Have you heard of Frederick Hester, the man who promoted Canvey in the early 1900s to make it a…
View More
In 1891, the Salvation Army established a Home Farm Colony in Hadleigh where the Hadleigh Downs Country Park lies today. The Salvation Army Jetty was used in the early 1900s to load off and on goods, mainly bricks, made at the Salvation Army brickworks located at the bottom of Chapel Lane. The bricks were then…
View More
The cinema was open every day of the week except Wednesday’s and even showed films for children on Saturdays. The building survived the Second World War and even the 1953 floods which ravished Canvey and the south-east. Beyond the Point was able to get a tour of the building, which included taking a look at where…
View More