Roundway Hospital dates back to the 1840’s when a committee of Justices approved plans for an asylum in Wiltshire. Forty-eight acres of land was purchased and architect Thomas Henry Wyatt was brought in to design the asylum, who went for an Italianate style. Stone for the buildings was mined locally and slate for the roof…
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This humble little chapel in Tillingham, on the Dengie Peninsula in Essex, was completed in 1867 for the Perculiar People. They were strict Puritan group founded in Rochford in 1838, and this religious trend spread through Victorian Essex. They attended day-long services on Sundays which often involved prayer and hymns in strict fashion, complete with…
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St. Mary’s Church in the tiny village of Mundon in Essex is a strikingly unusual and old-looking building. It’s timber-framed construction sets it apart as a building of bygone origin and design. It was built in the fourteenth-century within the moated site of Mundon Hall. Possibly built on the site of an Anglo-Saxon church, it…
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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…
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Across the country hundreds of air raid shelters were built at the outbreak of World War Two, both above and beneath the surface with the majority built across the South-East. We’ve visited two shelters, one by the coast and the other down the road in Broadstairs. We haven’t published the location of these shelters to…
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We have been fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to document a nuclear bunker built in the basement of Castle Point Borough Council’s offices. It was initially built for emergency planning during a nuclear war, but has been equipped more recently to handle environmental disasters or terrorism. In the late 1980s, plans were drawn…
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Overlooking the A127 with views spanning from Essex to London, the Grade II-listed All Saints Church has stood semi-abandoned for decades until 2021 when an army of volunteers set about transforming the area to make it more visitor friendly. The current building isn’t the first church to be built on that spot, in fact it’s…
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Seventeen miles west of Cardiff is the small village of St Athan’s, where this derelict village remains off of an unassuming country road. The idea for building a holiday camp first arose in 1923 when two philanthropists, co-founders of the Boys’ Clubs of Wales, visited a similar site in New Romney, Kent. The Boys’ Club…
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As World War Two intensified, Surrey Council Council ordered four deep shelters to be built. These big underground complexes could accommodate hundreds of civilians in the event of an air raid. This shelter was built within the grounds of the now demolished Cane Hill Asylum, so presumably would have been available for both local residents…
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Surrounded by fields and just meters away from the C2C railway line, St Margaret’s Church has been standing for some 670 years, having been founded in 1350. Prior to this, in 1080, the Doomsday Book describes Bowers Gifford as having a wooden Saxon church. When the land in Bowers Gifford was gifted to the Giffard…
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