The Royal Hotel c1950, Purfleet
The Royal Hotel c1950, Purfleet Ref: P148001
Memories of The Royal Hotel c1950, Purfleet
Purfleet in The Past
The Royal Hotel was one of the "whitebait inns" which drew custom down-river from London in the nineteenth century. In both World Wars Purfleet was a transit camp for thousands of soldiers waiting to be shipped abroad from Tilbury docks. The Essex shore was called the Erith Rands. Rand was Anglo-saxon for border or Edge. At Purfleet, in medieval times Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury crossed to the Kent shore by a ferry at the Mermaid Causeway. Even earlier subterranean caves in the chalk cliffs neaby were used by the Danes. Including a tunnel which extended a mile under the Thames. On top of the cliffs there used to be a lighthouse, and before that there was a Limeburning Industry. In the 1940s a margerine factory and a Cement works and a paper mill operated in this area. An Illuminated Tidal Guage was erected in 1924 for the use of Thames Pilots when they guided ships between the Docks up & down the Thames River.
Purfleet & local memories
Read and share memories of Purfleet and Essex inspired by Frith photos.
Purfleet Primary School
I started at Purfleet Infants & Primary School aged 4, I put my head on the desk and cried for ages, but there was a lovely elderly lady teacher (I can't remember her name?), she blew my nose and washed my face, I'd arrived with my older sister Kitty, that was ok, but she went off to her classroom across the playground... We used to have a sleep mid-morning after milk, Mr Walker was the Headmaster and Mrs Paige was a teacher. I remember after the first day I loved it. We had a large grassy area to play on and if you found a knot-hole in the wooden fence you could peep through at the soldiers marching up and down and being shouted out, some had white feathers on their caps, just a bit further on from the school was the rifle range, now a nature reserve I believe. I had this friend Cynthia Rodwell who was hysterical to be with, she used to play Benny Hill records (very... Read more
Purfleet - A Very Nice Community
We moved from the garrison to the village just after the floods, I was 12. We moved into Malakwa, next door to the post office run by Mr and Mrs Smith and their daughter Silvia (I had a crush on her but that is another story). The paper shop by the railway station was run by Mr Eaton and family. People I remember are Mr and Mrs Busby and family, the Stocks who ran the grocery store, who lost their son in a terrible accident by the Royal Hotel, the road had a severe right hand bend at the time and a vehicle carrying newsprint from the Thames Board Mills lost its load and crushed him on the bend. Other neighbours I remember are Mr and Mrs Asplin and sons, Mr Ball who was the hairdresser, his sons Bernard, Michael and Kenny, then Mr Wiltshire who had the veg shop, which was later turned into a ladies hair dressers. Moving further up the road, there was the dairy run by... Read more
THAMES BOARD MILLS
From what I remember I used to work at TBM and was on shift work at NO 11 machine. Morris Tapsell was shift superintendent. We had wimpey in charge of the wet end and George Beany at the dry end. Quality control was in an office upstairs at the dry end. Allan Crissell and Johnny Christmas were another couple of guys that were there. This machine was a state of the art then and I believe it was the 1st Inverform machine of that type in the UK. It was run on a 3 shift basis so not much sleep was had by any of us. The machine used to make about 18 tons per hour with a 183 inch deckle. I wonder if anyone is still around from that era. I have looked at Google.earth and can't see where the TBM is. Perhaps someone can help as to where all the infrastructure is now?
