Isle Of Grain The Isle In Historical Times The Isle Today

The following extract is taken from the Topographical Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland by John Gorton, 1833:

The closure of the road caused considerable anger among the residents of the Island and it was later reopened. The problem of reaching London by a less circuitous route was later to be addressed by the Thames and Medway Canal, which plan, too, was not a success.

In 1855, as part of military defences guarding the Thames, Grain Tower , a fort, was built. It remained in use until 1946, having been used during both World Wars.

2 The Isle today

The south of the Isle is an important industrial area, with a large container port and a power station, and was until 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du home to a major oil refineryAn oil refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into useful petroleum products. Raw or unprocessed ("crude") oil is not very useful in the form it comes in out of the ground. It needs to be broken down into parts an. During the building of the Channel TunnelThe Channel Tunnel ( French: le tunnel sous la Manche often nicknamed the Chunnel is a rail tunnel beneath the English Channel at the Straits of Dover, connecting Cheriton in Kent, England and Sangatte in northern France. A long-standing and hugely expens the segments for the tunnel were manufactured here.

A suggestion to site a new London international airportFor the wireless networking standard, see AirPort networking; for the movie, see Airport (movie An airport is a designated location for aircraft to take off and land. While smaller airports—often called aerodromes, airfields or landing strips—might includ to lie west of the Isle on the Cliffe Marshes aroused a lot of local opposition, as well as from environmental groups such as the Royal Society for the Protection of BirdsThe Royal Society for the Protection of Birds RSPB is Europe's largest wildlife conservation charity. It has over one million members—that is more than the UK's three main political parties combined. It was founded in 1889 in England, initially to stop th. It is still not completely written off.

3 Settlements

The ancient village of Grain , at one time, as shown on an 1801 map, called Grain, or St James in the Isle of Grain. Like others in the Hundred of Hoo , the village was called after the dedication of its parish church - cp Allhallows (= All Saints), Hoo St Mary , Hoo St Werburgh .

Wallend is the other settlement, and is almost entirely industrial.

4 Port Victoria

" In the late 1870's the South Eastern Railway decided to promote a line through the (Hoo) district, with a view to competing for the traffic from London to SheernessSheerness is a town on the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary in Kent, England. It is the largest town on the island with a population of about 11,000. Sheerness was the focus of an attack by the Dutch navy in June 1667, when 72 hostile ships compelled, formerly an almost unchallenged stronghold of the London, Chatham and Dover RailwayBlackfriars Railway Bridge The London, Chatham and Dover Railway was a railway company that operated in south-eastern England between 1858 and 1923 before grouping with three other companies to form the Southern Railway. Its lines ran through London and e. For some years past a steamer had been running from Sheerness to StroodStrood is the part of Rochester in Kent to the west of the River Medway. It is mostly housing and industry. The council offices beside Rochester Bridge are in the former factory buildings of Aveling & Porter, an engineering firm which made traction engine, 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 ..."

The railway was opened throughout on September 11 1882. The pier was built for passenger traffic and indeed Queen Victoria was a passenger: she "... took a rather curious fancy to Grain as a chosen departure point for trips to Germany" and that Port Victoria "was built essentially as a railway station at the end of a line from Windsor"
- (Extracts taken from The Kent Village Book (Alan Bignell, 1999))

The project was not a success and the ferry service was withdrawn in 1901, and the pier fell into disuse. It was closed in 1951, and the 1.75 miles of line taken up. The site is now occupied by the industrial sprawl.

5 Postscript

The Isle of Grain is sometimes confused with the larger Hoo Peninsula, containing villages including Allhallows and Stoke .

Kent English islands

<Hide>

Home > Isle of Grain

1 The Isle in historical times