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THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
Saturday, July 13th.
After breakfast, the members occupied the time before the recommencement of
the adjourned meeting at the Institute (reported above) in visiting the various
points of interest in and about Southend. It was in the last century but a small
hamlet of the neighbouring parish of Prittlewell, but has now "developed" into a
very popular watering place. "Southende" is said to be first mentioned in the
Minister's accounts of 27 and 28 Henry VIII (1536), It was in 1791 that the
erection of the Royal Hotel and Terrace was commenced by a company ; failing
to attract visitors its progress as a watering-place was at first slow. In 1801 the
Princess Charlotte of Wales, then five years old, visited Southend for its sea-
bathing, and her mother, Princess Caroline of Wales, attracted a fashionable circle
here during the summer of 1804. It was this unfortunate Princess, acquitted in
1806 of the scandalous charges imputed to her during her residence here, who
conferred the title of "Royal" on the hotel, library, &c., and from that time
Southend has prospered.
Luncheon was taken at the Royal Hotel at noon, and then the party started on
a walk along the shore to Leigh, noting on the way the "Crow-Stone," which,
with "London-Stone" at Yantlet Creek on the Kent side of the river (here 5 miles
broad), served to mark the boundary of the jurisdiction of the Corporation of
London as Conservators of the Thames. The smaller stone bears the remains of
the carving of the City Arms, with date 1285, with numerous inscriptions
(Richard I. sold the Crown rights of the river to the Citizens in 1197) ; the larger
granite obelisk was erected in 1838. The last Lord Mayor visiting this spot was
David Solomons, in 1856 (the Thames Conservancy Act was passed in 1857), and
thus the gorgeous water-pageants, that had been customary for so many years,
became things of the past.
The walk yielded for the botanists well-filled vascula, but only a few of the
more noticeable finds can be here enumerated. Linum angustifolium was found,
as it has often been before, upon the clay cliffs near Southend, and some broken
ground near the Crowstone was exceptionally rich, Epilobium hirsutum, Melilotus
officinalis, and M. alba, Sinapis nigra, Trifolium maritimum, Faeniculum vulgare,
Senecio erucifolius, Helminthia echioides, and the escape, Phalaris canariensis,
occurring amongst others
A stretch of sand and shingle with a salt marsh inland lay between the Crow Stone
and Leigh. Here Glaucium flavum, Eryngium maritimum, Arenaria peploides,
Triglochin maritimum, Aster tripolium, Artemisia maritima, Armeria maritima,
Plantago maritima, P. coronopus, and Salsola kali made a characteristic assem-
blage, and Foeniculum capillaceum, afterwards found to be general along this coast,
Trifolium fragiferum, Ononis repens var, inermis, and Honkeneja peploides were
also observed.
Mr. Howard Vaughan assured us that among the Phragmitis communis in the
swampy landslip near the railway were both Typha latifolia and T. angustifolia.
The wooded ground by the railway from the Crow Stone to Leigh was formerly
(and perhaps still is) a capital hunting ground for insects. Mr. Howard Vaughan
gave some particulars of the Lepidopterous fauna of the neighbourhood, which are
embodied in his paper in the Essex Naturalist, "On the Lepidoptera of
Leigh" (ante pp. 123-140).
At Leigh a visit was first paid to the spacious and ancient Church of St.
Clement, the ivy-covered tower of which on the summit of the hill forms so
conspicuous a land mark, combining with the village below and the broad Thames