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West Thurrock
West Thurrock photos
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West Thurrock maps
Historic maps of West Thurrock and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all West Thurrock maps
West Thurrock area books
Displaying 1 of 18 books about West Thurrock and the local area. View all books for this area
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Memories of West Thurrock
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Essex memories
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 - 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
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
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?
Where I Live
This is where I now live,backing onto the Rec,all the toys for the childen have now gone but new ones been put up over by the old tenns courts which is now an carpark.
I have lived at Hall Avenue since 1989
Where I Lived
This is where I lived between 1966-1984,above the Read Brothers newsagent in Hall Road,there is only two shops there now,one is still the newsagent and the other is closed at the moment,the rest of the six shops are now flats for the disabled.
Read Brothers
My mother and father worked for Mr Read between 1966 and 1987, most of the time around the Hall Road shop but later in the mid to late 1980's also up in the High Street shop, which has been pulled down and an new shop built.
Mr Read died in the late 1990's and since then the shops have been sold - the High Street is not the same now.
