Tilbury - History, Fort, Docks, Transport

51°28N 0°23E, pop (2000e) 12 100. Town in Essex, SE England, UK; on the R Thames estuary, E of London; railway; major port and docks for London and the SE.

For other places with the same name, see Tilbury (disambiguation).

Tilbury is located on the north bank of the River Thames, in the borough of Thurrock in England, at the point where the river suddenly narrows to about 800 yards/740 metres in width.

Tilbury has a deep water port, a fort and was the site of an important ferry to Gravesend on the south bank of the river.

The county's speedway team can be found nearby at Arena Essex, next to Thurrock Lakeside along the A1306.

Over recent years Tilbury has gained a large travelling community.

History

Queen Elizabeth I unwisely placed her main army at Tilbury (see Speech to the Troops at Tilbury) where they would have found it difficult to cross the river and prevent the attacking Spanish army from capturing London after it had been landed in Kent by the Armada.

Fort

Forts at Tilbury were an important defence of London, particularly during the Spanish Armada and the Anglo-Dutch Wars.

The fort fell into neglect again and did not feature in the English Civil War.

After the English Civil war Charles II was exiled in Holland where he was influenced by European advances in military architecture.

Work started on the current fort in 1670 but was conducted slowly often with the use of pressed labour from nearby towns and was still continuing in the 1680s.

As well as the brick fort there was an earth and brick gunline along the river bank.

Highland prisoners captured after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 were held at Tilbury while a cricket match in 1776 between men from the Kent and Essex sides of the Thames ended in bloodshed when guns were seized from the guardroom;

Nineteenth century improvements in metallurgy and artillery firepower saw extensive re-design and re-modelling along the fort's riverside, much of it overseen by Captain Charles Gordon [1833-85] later known as 'Gordon of Khartoum'.

The Victorian modernisation was, in due course, partly built over again prior to the First World War and it is these later concrete emplacements and expense magazines which visitors see today on the south-east curtain.

The fort's sole military success was in the First World War when anti-aircraft guns on the parade ground shot down a Zeppelin airship.

The fort has several interesting features.

There is a separate fort at Coalhouse, East Tilbury, which has a Napoleonic and Victorian history.

Docks

For many people Tilbury dock was there point of emigration to Australia under an assisted passage scheme established and operated by the Australian Government. The docks at Tilbury operated as London's passenger liner terminal until the 1960s, and were reopened by the Port of Tilbury group as the London Cruise Terminal .

Today the port handles a variety of cargo, container, and passenger liner traffic and remains, along with Southampton and Felixstowe, one of Britain's three major ports.

Transport

Thurrock Council operates a ferry between Tilbury and Gravesend, together with Kent County Council.

Tilbury has one railway station on the c2c (London, Tilbury and Southend) rail route:

Tilbury Town railway station

Tilbury Riverside railway station was closed in 1993 and a bus service now connects Tilbury Town railway station and the ferry to Gravesend.

A form of transport in the 19th century as alluded to by Patrick O'Brian in his book "Desolation Island", page 40, "the post-boy...feigned interest in a passing tilbury, calling out to its driver 'that the knacker's yard was only a quarter of a mile along the road...'"