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West Tilbury is a village and former civil parish in the Thurrock district, in the ceremonial county of Essex, England. It is on the top of and on the sides of a tall river terrace overlooking the River Thames. Part of the modern town of Tilbury (including part of Tilbury Fort) is within the traditional parish of West Tilbury. In 1931 the parish had a population of 444. On 1 April 1936 the parish was abolished to form Thurrock.
The modern town of Tilbury is partly in its traditional area (including Tilbury Fort) but is buffer zone and mainly in the traditional parish of Chadwell St Mary. Grid square map Ordnance survey website
Earlier agricultural regimes over the parish embraced mixed farming (cattle, grasses, cereals, beans) upon the 'upland' gravel heights, where, before present demands upon the water table, numerous surface springs, brooks and ponds existed, and intensive marshland sheep husbandry (producing ewes' milk and cheeses for the local and wider markets). In the 21st century, the agricultural picture is one of interesting variety within a wholly arable framework, with rotations which include oilseed rapes, barley, potatoes, springreens, salad onions and some maize corn across the high, lighter soils, and rape, potatoes and wheat upon the low lying clays. A few runner beans and small herbs such as coriander are cultivated on suitable loamy patches near the village centre.Bingley, R. (Contributor), Personal Field Observation 2000–2012
A Claudian period rectangular defensive enclosure on Gun Hill was excavated in the late 1960s (finds at Thurrock Museum). A most important migration period (c.600 AD) grubenhaus – a sunken floored hut – was examined, also in the late 1960s during gravel extraction. It indicates the early Anglo-Saxonisation of the area from c. 450 AD onward and is similar to the numerous other grubenhauser away on the Mucking hilltop.Bingley R. A Saxon Grubenhaus at West Tilbury. Thurrock Local History Society Vol. 16, 1972–3
In 2000, a twisted gold wire torc with decorated buffer finials, probably of 1st century B.C. date, was discovered by an agricultural worker here. It was illegally disposed of and is now lost to the archaeological record,Bingley, Randal, The West Tilbury Gold Torc in Panorama 53 - The Journal of the Thurrock Local History Society but photos taken at the time of finding indicate it was similar to torc-types from the Waldalgesheim chariot burial in the Rhineland.Eluére, C. The Celts: First Masters of Europe. p. 161, 1992
Several notable but very small and vulnerable areas of ancient woodland can still be seen. Known as Ashen Shaw, Rainbow Shaw and Shrove Hill, each adheres to the parish boundary, a noticeable feature of many ancient woodlands in the district. The former takes its name from its outline, being set on the northern edge of West Tilbury in a curve around the stony hill summit. In spring its canopy of wild cherries in blossom is a continuing delight. Its ancient coppice stools include field maple, ash, crab apple, hornbeam and oak ( Quercus robur), while the woodland floor is prolific with violets, native bluebell and wild arum. Pignut is also present. Shrove Hill, upon the west boundary with Chadwell, is so called from 'shrough', an old word for rough woodland. Another tiny parcel of wood is Coopers Shaw – the latter an elm thicket of more recent origin. The local word 'shaw' derives from a medieval term for woodland which was usually managed as coppice.
Additionally a 'terrier' notebook (an account of land details) dating from the 1780s describes every West Tilbury farm and field with its crops; tallies of livestock etc. The present day field systems have developed as farming needs require from those which the above earlier maps describe, and, apart from hedge removal and general enlargement of the plots, show no marked difference (in some cases, the enclosure shapes of 1584 are still evident).
Earlier agricultural regimes over the parish embraced mixed farming (cattle, grasses, cereals, beans) upon the 'upland' gravel heights, where, before present demands upon the water table, numerous surface springs, brooks and ponds existed, and intensive marshland sheep husbandry (producing ewes' milk and cheeses for the local and wider markets).
The West Tilbury Commons at present cover above of the parish, the smallest portion being the central area of village Green. This was originally (from about 1257) the market square (held each Wednesday) set up by Richard de Tilbury, the manor lord. Adjacent to it, was the manor pond, doubtless an important feature in an age when rural markets were supplied by pack-horses coming from considerable distances. The annual St. James' fair also took place here, and Walker's mapping of 1584 refers to it as the 'Fayer Green'. The larger areas of common grazing lay farther off: Hall Common (south of the manor house) ; Parsonage Common (near the medieval parsonage house) ; Tilbury Fort Common and ; Walton Common (close to the Tilbury Power Station) ; fringes of Fort Road .
For a short while under the incumbency Rev. David Evans in the 1780s, a house on the Green (Well House) was used as the parson's home, and about a decade later, the Rev. Adam Gordon purchased the 'Bell Inn' public house at the Gun Hill corner, converting it into a handsome parsonage house. This gave its name to Rectory Road, and served as the home of West Tilbury's future rectors from about 1799 until the mid 20th century, when it was sold off and demolished. Some elements of its old garden remain amongst wooded scrubland on the site.
With the 1780s, competition arose when the rector of St. James', the Rev. David Evans, began to market a springwater from his rectory house yard (which stood upon the same hill as the Hall). This was sold from Owen's warehouse in Savile Row near Temple Bar. The attempt to impose this 'inferior' substitute on the public probably lasted less than a decade (the Rev. D. Evans died early 1795), by which time the West Tilbury springs were in any case falling from public awareness.Randal Bingley (2010). Behold the Painful Plough, Country Life in West Tilbury, Essex, 1700–1850. Thurrock Unitary Council Museum Service. In 1803 it was described as 'occasionally resorted to' and the parish rate records do not refer to the main well-site after 1807.
Other heritage buildings are either central or peripheral to the inland village itself and, taken as a group, demonstrate admirably the local vernacular, plan and style of the late 15th to mid 19th centuries within the locality. West Tilbury Hall, Condovers (now Walnut Tree Cottage) and Marshalls are all early Tudor timber framed (oak and elm) Hall house with crosswings. Of these, West Tilbury Hall is the largest, with fine Tudor brick cellars under its rear projection. This is the only moated site within the parish, one fragment only of the wide dry ditch remaining at the south garden edge, next to the churchyard. Polwicks at Low Street represents the newer Renaissance house of the early 17th century (about 1620), again timber framed but of double-pile arrangement (two houseframes side by side), while Manor Farm (currently called The White House), is of the late 17th century, being essentially one pile or houseframe of double length to the previous. It reflects foreign softwood timbers coming in from Scandinavia (Norwegian fir) and is largely weatherboard clad.
The move to brick, which became a village feature from the 18th century, is represented in The King's Head (c.1770s with additions) but this, like the Post Office of c.1810 has been stucco faced. The upper windows of this important building above a pleasant shopfront bow, have been atrociously replaced in the late 20th century. The Old Bakery on the Green is therefore the best example to seek – a compact yellow stockbrick home of small scale and with appropriate windows, built in the 1830s. A little outside the village, at Gunhill Farm and the Mill House Farm, are two characteristic early Victorian villa-type residences, erected for prosperous farming and milling families, the first in 1839 and the latter in 1850. They reflect the comfortable style of town-influenced architecture which replaced outdated farmstead homes throughout the district over much of the 19th century.
Well House, which overlooks the Green, gives the impression of being an early Victorian residence of yellow stock brick. Its interior however, reveals late 15th century timber framing. A probable crosswinged hall-house of that period seems subsequently to have been remodelled to a 17th-century building of elongate form. This is shown upon Charles Sloane's map of 1742. In 1794 it was described in the Sun Fire Assurance ledgers as 'Lath and Plaister and tyled', serving at that period as the rectory house for parson David Evans. About 50 years later, its frontage would be cased in with local brick.
Its origins are possibly very ancient, for in the deeds of Merton College, Oxford is a document of 1272 relating to West Tilbury, to which several local landholders were witness, including 'John of the Well' (de fonte). The Saxon word 'well' meant a spring of water, or natural fountain. The pond adjacent to Well House is fed by a gravel spring, which is dammed at its south-western end above the small valley.
Situated to one side of the Memorial Hall, The Schoolhouse is a gabled slate-roofed building of yellow stock brick with red courses, a typical example of late Victorian 'board-school' architecture. Currently it stands empty, its final use having been a council depot for storing and repairing grass cutting equipment. The iron-railed and tarmaced playground looks onto Rectory Road. It opened in 1876 with capacity to take 66 children from infant stage through to school-leaver age, an average attendance in the mid-1880s being 55 scholars. The 1891 census indicated a considerable gipsy camp had arrived on the West Tilbury common and the presence of this population together with new docks overspill led to the extension of the schoolhouse in 1894. In 1913, it was described in the local newspaper as a 'comprehensive' and as late as the 1930s, under the charge of a headmistress and 2 teachers, as many as 118 children were on its register. Closure came with Friday, 22 July 1960 when transfer to the newly formed Torrells School, some distance off at Little Thurrock, commenced for seniors, the younger children moving mainly to Chadwell. The headteachers' log books are not present in any known public archive – a significant loss to the social story of the village.
As 1988 approached, the local council (Thurrock Borough) became involved in preparations for a re-enactment of the historic scenes somewhere in the village surrounds and the local museum undertook to finally answer the locational question. The project ranged between archival research at the British Museum, where two important maps by the military surveyor Robert Adams were examined, and fieldwork around the parish (1986). The project resulted in certifying that Holman had been correct. 'The place of assemblie at armes', where the speech had been given was certainly in fields beside the manorial post mill, but there was another important site a little to the south-west, on the present Gun Hill summit. Here, overlooking the fort and Gravesend, had stood the Lord General's pavilion, doubtless with the other richly adorned tents of the Earl of Leicester's staff officers close by. The queen had moved to this site to dine among her captains after the parade.
Such images of spectacular ceremonial and royal glamour all apply to the two days of Elizabeth's visit – 8 and 9 August 1588. The Camp Royal itself had been in preparation for several weeks beforehand. On the river, just downstream of the Tudor blockhouse (fort), a defensive boom made of ships' masts and anchors was being constructed at a cost of over £2,000.
The numbers of soldiers present at the time of the queen's visit is not clear. Over the month or so of the great army's presence at West Tilbury, between 17,000 and 22,000 men are said to have lain in camp, but certainly not all served throughout.
The high stone tower of St. James' is the most likely visual communications station to have served the Armada camp, conveying signals via all waterfront blockhouses, Leicester's pavilion, Gravesend and the ports of the Downs, (exploiting the Kentish hilltops). Eastward, it looked far beyond Sheppey, where the uppermost turrets of Queenborough held a beacon facility. Ranging the Thames during the invasion scare were two specially appointed watch vessels, the 'Victory' and 'Lion', while the fishermen of Leigh – a small seaport visible with moderate eyesight from the West Tilbury fields – were primed to give warning of the presence of any hostile galley to speedy English pinnaces patrolling the estuary. Leigh-on-Sea's pale 15th-century tower still carried its masonry beacon turret, as does that of nearer church of St. Michael's, Fobbing.
On the day of her arrival by royal barge from London (8 August), the queen's progress, (after being received by the Earl of Leicester at the blockhouse fort), was across the mile or so of marshland below the church and Tilbury Hill. Robert Adam's detailed 'second' map depicts the route of her coach over the raised marshland – 'the Causeway from the forte to ye Campe' – where he shows the positions of groups of guards, with no less than 34 fluttering ensigns (banners) along the way:
So tells James Aske in his contemporary verse-picture of the royal visit, called 'Elizabetha Triumphans'.
After an initial visit to the camp, the queen continued on through the narrow lane which led northwards out of West Tilbury, onto Mucking hilltop and thence toward Horndon on the Hill, where she was to stay the night at the manor house called 'Cantis', the home of 'Master Edward Rich'. Upon the morning of 9 August, a return journey through the valley of 'Howe ford' was made, climbing finally to the 'place of assemblie at armes', where the great review was to be enacted and Elizabeth's historic speech delivered.
West Tilbury's highest unwooded ground provided the queen's parade area – some of common strip field, lying eastward from the windmill and with clear views of the distant Thames, beyond (modern) Southend-on-Sea. From this dry gravely hilltop, the landscape fell to a small tree-crowned valley, across which, perhaps, a mock skirmish, 'of two battalions' described by the ballad maker Thomas Deloney: 'such a battaile pitcht in England many a day had not been seene'.Randal Bingley Elizabeth’s Armada Camp: A Locational Report. Thurrock Local History Society Vol. 29. 1988
Spanish captives, destined for confinement at Richard Drake's house near Esher, were brought into the queen's presence. Among them was Pedro de Valdez, General of the Andalusian squadron, which had sailed with the Spanish Armada from Lisbon. Interrogated by the Privy council as to why Philip's armies had put forth, Don Pedro answered; 'Why, but to subdue your nation, and root you all out'. All, he said, meant both Catholic and Protestant alike – to send the former 'good men' to heaven, and 'all you that are heretics, to hell'. The drift of this bloody message was ordered to be read out to the trained bands by the camp's chaplain next sermon.Queen Elizabeth Slept Here. Thurrock Local History Society. 1988
Reaching the queen whilst at dinner, came the earliest dispatches from Francis Drake aboard Revenge, reporting the Spanish fleet already hastening in the eastern channel; less joyous was other news that the Duke of Parma's squadrons lying in the Netherlands, were immediately to sail for the invasion of the south of England.
It was a false alarm. By mid August, the Camp Royal was discontinued, its warriors, ill-fed and wanting wages despite royal promises, were drifting homeward. The Surrey contingent's records reveal dreadful confusion over equipment and misplacement of 'furniture'; as the camp dispersed. William Virtell of Croydon claimed that his morion helmet of iron had been taken by Lieutenant Pavett who 'gave him a worste for it'. Numerous men were pressed into sea-service before they could officially leave the military zone. Thus Edward Upchurch of Surrey lost his equipment (a firearm, powder flask and 'tuch box') aboard a ship called the Rose or the Lion. Another soldier called Merce 'lefte his musket in pawne', while Anthonie Clarke's complaint was that he had served his country at Tilbury 'one whole week with a calliver and had no paie'.Ridley Bax, A. Preparations by the County of Surrey to Resist the Spanish Armada, Surrey Archaeological Society, Vol. 16, 1901.
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