Isle of Grain | |
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St James Church | |
Location within Kent | |
Population | 1,648 (2011) [1] |
OS grid reference | TQ8876 |
Civil parish |
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Unitary authority | |
Ceremonial county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | ROCHESTER |
Postcode district | ME3 |
Dialling code | 01634 |
Police | Kent |
Fire | Kent |
Ambulance | South East Coast |
UK Parliament | |
Isle of Grain (Old English Greon, meaning gravel) is a village and the easternmost point of the Hoo Peninsula within the district of Medway in Kent, south-east England. [2] No longer an island and now forming part of the peninsula, the area is almost all marshland and is a major habitat for diverse wetland birds. [3] The village constitutes a civil parish, which at the 2011 census had a population of 1,648, [1] a net decrease of 83 people in 10 years.
Extract from the Topographical Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland by John Gorton, 1833: [4]
"GRAINE, ISLE OF, co. Kent
"A parish in the Hundred of Hoo, lathe of Aylesford, opposite to Sheppey at the mouth of the Thames; it is about three miles and a half long, and two and a half broad and is formed by Yantlet Creek running from the Medway to the Thames. The Creek was filled up, and had a road across it for 40 years until 1823, when the Lord Mayor ordered it to be again reopened, so as to give about eight feet navigation for barges at spring tide; thus saving a distance of fourteen miles into the Medway, and avoiding the danger of going round by the Nore."
The severing of the road resulted in an inconclusive High Court case in 1824, and by 1835 the causeway had been reinstated. The goods route from the Medway Towns to the upper Thames Estuary was later shortened by the Thames and Medway Canal, although this route, too, was abandoned.
In various warm years the incidence of "marsh fever" (malaria) was extremely high. Since the removal of livestock from marshy areas, the number of native mosquitoes has greatly declined, and Britain's last recorded outbreak of malaria was in 1918.
Yantlet Creek at the south of the Yantlet Line was the downstream limit of the City of London's ownership of the bed of the River Thames. It is marked by a London Stone beside the mouth of the creek. Its successor for navigation purposes, the Port of London Authority, also owns the river bed down to here but has navigation policing rights on a debatable area of estuary or sea as far as the seaside resort of Margate which has normal sea salinity.
Grain Tower, a fort about a quarter of a mile off-shore and accessible at low tide, was completed in 1855. Concrete emplacements and shelters were added during the World Wars when the tower, in addition to mounting guns, was used as a boom control point. The boom was a chain supporting antisubmarine nets across the two rivers, preventing entry by German U-boats. The tower was decommissioned in 1956. [5]
The Isle of Grain was also the site of Grain Fort, built in the 1860s and used for coastal defence until the 1950s. The fort was almost completely demolished about 1960, leaving only the original earth rampart, complete with some tunnels running underground.
Until 1982 the south of the Isle was home to a major oil refinery. Construction of this facility for BP took from 1948 to 1952, and it suffered flooding almost immediately when the North Sea flood of 1953 breached the sea wall.
In the 1990s the refinery site was chosen for a purpose-built facility to make concrete lining segments for the Channel Tunnel. There was not the space to make the sections at the Shakespeare Cliff construction site near Folkestone at the tunnel's entrance, so the Isle of Grain was used because large quantities of granite aggregate could be delivered there by ship from Glensanda in Scotland, and the finished sections could then be transported by a pre-existing rail link to east Kent. [6] Following completion of the Channel Tunnel, the site is now part-occupied by London Thamesport, the UK's third largest container port. The remainder is allocated for industrial and warehousing use under the Thames Gateway project.
Next to the former BP site is Grain Power Station, built in the 1970s, which previously burnt oil. It was mothballed in 2003, but reopened in 2006 to provide up to three per cent of the National Grid supply. The oil-fired power station was demolished in 2015 and a new gas-fired station now stands on the site. Another major installation is a new Grain Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import facility.
The Isle of Grain is the landing point for the BritNed undersea power cable between The Netherlands and the UK. It will also be the landing point for the NeuConnect interconnector linking the UK to Germany, planned for completion in 2028.
An 1801 map shows that the ancient village of Grain was at one time called St James in the Isle of Grain. Like others in the Hundred of Hoo, the village was named after the dedication of its parish church; for example Allhallows (All Saints), St Mary Hoo, Hoo St Werburgh.
Wallend is the other settlement, now uninhabited and contained within a fenced-off industrial site. The Medway Power Station now occupies the site.
Local historian Alan Bignell gives this description of the new port and accompanying railway:
In the late 1870s the South Eastern Railway decided to promote a line through the (Hoo) district, with a view to competing for the traffic from London to Sheerness, formerly an almost unchallenged stronghold of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. For some years past a steamer had been running from Sheerness to Strood, whence South Eastern trains gave a connection to London. ... the journey was of some length, along the rather tortuous course of the Medway. In 1879 the South Eastern obtained an act for a branch leaving their North Kent line at a point about (3.5 miles) from Gravesend ... to Stoke ... In the following year powers were obtained for an extension, (3.5 miles) long, to St James, in the Isle of Grain, where a deep-water pier was to be built on the Medway. A ferry was to connect the new pier with Sheerness ...
[ citation needed ]
The railway was opened throughout on 11 September 1882. The pier was built for passenger traffic and Queen Victoria was a passenger. Bignell records that she "... took a rather curious fancy to Grain as a chosen departure point for trips to Germany" and there are claims that Port Victoria "was built essentially as a railway station at the end of a line from Windsor".[ citation needed ]
The project was not a success and the ferry service was withdrawn in 1901, and the pier upon which the station was located fell into disuse by 1931, with the station moving to a new site just inland. It was closed completely in 1951, and the 1.75 miles (2.82 km) of line taken up. The site is now occupied by industry, though the foundations of the pier are still visible at low tide to this day and are clearly visible on aerial photographs of the area at coordinates 51°26′00″N0°42′11″E / 51.433253°N 0.703179°E .
From about 1912 an airship station, RNAS Kingsnorth was positioned at Grain by the Admiralty. From the beginning of World War I regular patrols were made along the Thames estuary from this station, as part of English Channel defences. In 1914 Port Victoria housed a Royal Navy aircraft repair depot adjacent to the station. Activities at these bases declined after 1918, until in 1924 defence cuts saw their closure. The site is now occupied by Kingsnorth Power Station.
But soon the course of the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore. The famous Thames barges sit in brown clusters upon the water with an effect of birds floating upon a pond. —Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea
A suggestion in 2003 to site a new London international airport to lie just west of Grain aroused a lot of local opposition, as well as from environmental groups such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
In November 2011 architects Foster & Partners published proposals to expand the transport system of South East England. These, called the Thames Hub, would include building a new four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain, partially on land reclaimed from the estuary. This plan was controversial. [7] [8] On 13 April 2012, Richard Deakin, the head of National Air Traffic Services, commented that "the very worst spot you could put an airport is just about here ... We're a little surprised that none of the architects thought it worthwhile to have a little chat." [9]
In an interim report on 17 December 2013, the Airports Commission shortlisted three options. Grain was not among them. [10] The Commission's final recommendations were released in July 2015. These stated that a Grain airport "had substantial disadvantages that collectively outweighed potential benefits", and the proposal was then abandoned. [11]
On 16 June 1857 the Isle was the site of a heavyweight championship prize-fight between William Perry (known as the Tipton Slasher) and Tom Sayers. The fight was won by Sayers who claimed the title of heavyweight champion of England. [12]
Medway is a unitary authority and conurbation in Kent, South East England. It had a population of 278,016 in 2019. The unitary authority was formed in 1998 when Rochester-upon-Medway amalgamated with the Borough of Gillingham to form Medway Towns. It is a unitary authority area run by Medway Council, independent of Kent County Council but remains part of the ceremonial county of Kent.
The River Medway is a river in South East England. It rises in the High Weald, West Sussex and flows through Tonbridge, Maidstone and the Medway conurbation in Kent, before emptying into the Thames Estuary near Sheerness, a total distance of 70 miles (113 km). About 13 miles (21 km) of the river lies in East Sussex, with the remainder being in Kent.
The Isle of Sheppey is an island off the northern coast of Kent, England, neighbouring the Thames Estuary, centred 42 miles (68 km) from central London. It has an area of 36 square miles (93 km2). The island forms part of the local government district of Swale. Sheppey is derived from Old English Sceapig, meaning "Sheep Island".
The Port of London Authority (PLA) is a self-funding public trust established on 31 March 1909 in accordance with the Port of London Act 1908 to govern the Port of London. Its responsibility extends over the Tideway of the River Thames and its continuation. It maintains and supervises navigation, and protects the river's environment.
Queenborough is a town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Swale borough of Kent in South East England.
Sheerness is a port town and civil parish beside the mouth of the River Medway on the north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 11,938, it is the second largest town on the island after the nearby town of Minster which has a population of 21,319.
The Hoo Peninsula is a peninsula in Kent, England, separating the estuaries of the rivers Thames and Medway. It is dominated by a line of chalk, clay and sand hills, surrounded by an extensive area of marshland composed of alluvial silt. The name Hoo is a Saxon word believed to mean 'spur of land' or refers to the 'distinct heel-shape of the ridge of hills' through Hoo. Hoo features in the Domesday Book. The peninsula is home to internationally and nationally protected wildlife sites as well as industrial facilities and energy industries.
The Thames Estuary is where the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea, in the south-east of Great Britain.
The PS Medway Queen is a paddle driven steamship, the only mobile estuary paddle steamer left in the United Kingdom. She was one of the "little ships of Dunkirk", making a record seven trips and rescuing 7,000 men in the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Allhallows is a village and civil parish on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, England. Situated in the northernmost part of Kent, and covering an area of 23.99 km2, the parish is bounded on the north side by the River Thames, and in the east by the course of Yantlet creek, now silted up. At the 2011 census the parish had a population of 1,676.
Stoke is a civil parish on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, England, to the south of Allhallows, on the north of the Medway Estuary. The parish had a population of 1,060 at the 2011 census.
The Tideway is a part of the River Thames in England which is subject to tides. This stretch of water is downstream from Teddington Lock. The Tideway comprises the upper Thames Estuary including the Pool of London.
London Thamesport was a small container seaport on the River Medway, serving the North Sea. It is located on the Isle of Grain, in the Medway unitary authority district of the English county of Kent. The area was formerly called Port Victoria. Since early 2020, Thamesport has no longer operated as a container port, having been eclipsed by the new and much larger London Gateway container port on the Essex coast of the Thames Estuary.
Yantlet Creek is the creek draining into the River Thames that separated the Isle of Grain from the Hoo peninsula. It once connected the River Medway with the River Thames and made the Isle of Grain a true island. The creek silted up and now drains the area of The Isle of Grain and Allhallows Marshes. A monument known as the London Stone is located at its mouth and marks the limit of the City of London's ownership of the Thames.
Transportation needs within the county of Kent in South East England has been served by both historical and current transport systems.
The Hundred of Hoo Railway is a railway line in Kent, England, following the North Kent Line from Gravesend before diverging at Hoo Junction near Shorne Marshes and continuing in an easterly direction across the Hoo Peninsula, passing near the villages of Cooling, High Halstow, Cliffe and Stoke before reaching the Isle of Grain and the container port on its eastern tip, Thamesport. There used to be a short branch line leading from Stoke Junction to the coastal town of Allhallows but this closed from 4 December 1961, the same date on which the Hundred of Hoo line was closed to passenger services.
The BPRefinery (Kent) was an oil refinery on the Isle of Grain in Kent. It was commissioned in 1953 and had a maximum processing capacity of 11 million tonnes of crude oil per year. It was decommissioned in August 1982.
A potential Thames Estuary Airport has been proposed at various times since the 1940s. London's existing principal airports, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton are each sub-optimally located in various ways, such as being too close to built-up areas or requiring aircraft to fly low over London. In the case of Heathrow, the growth of air traffic has meant that the airport is operating at 98% capacity. Several locations for a new airport have been proposed in the Thames Estuary, to the east of London. These include Maplin Sands off Foulness on the north side of the estuary; Cliffe and the Isle of Grain in Kent on the south side; and artificial islands located off the Isle of Sheppey such as the "Boris Island" proposal championed by Boris Johnson, the then Mayor of London. Economic considerations have so far ruled out a new coastal airport, while political considerations have ruled out a new inland airport, leaving planners with an as-yet-unresolved dilemma.
The Thames Hub is a proposal for a new approach to integrated infrastructure development that combines rail, intermodal freight logistics, aviation, tidal renewable energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development in the Thames Estuary and connects this infrastructure to a trade and utilities spine that runs the length of the UK. It was developed by architects Foster + Partners, infrastructure consultants Halcrow and economists Volterra and launched by Lord Foster at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London on 2 November 2011.
The Heron Trail is 15+1⁄2-mile (24.9 km) long cycling trail that links with National Cycle Route 1 between Higham and Strood, then it heads around the Hoo Peninsula via Regional route 18 passing through 'Hoo St Werburgh', 'High Halstow' and 'Cliffe' before returning to Higham. It has a mixture of rural and maritime interest, with views of the River Medway and River Thames.
Media related to Isle of Grain at Wikimedia Commons