The Essex Naturalist
5
THE 1996 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Natural history of the Tilbury area: historical legacy
Roger Payne
To most people, the name Tilbury evokes a picture of docklands, urban sprawl
and gravel pits. All of these can he found within walking distance of West
Tilbury village. Yet few parts of Essex are so well endowed with interesting and
important sites for natural history, geology and archaeology.
Until the coming of the railway and the construction of the docks in 1883
and subsequently, Tilbury Town, this was a very rural, even isolated part of
Essex. People have been living here since very ancient times, certainly since the
Palaeolithic (225,000 BC). Mesolithic (8,000 BC) flint tools have heen found as
have substantial remains from the Neolithic period including ditched enclosures
and causewayed camps.
There is evidence for occupation during the Bronze Age with several round
barrows (burial mounds) and settlements on the higher ground, especially at
nearby Mucking. Later middle and late Iron Age sites dotted the gravel terrace
hills from West Tilbury to Mucking. Even on the marshes there are, or rather
were, remains of a late Iron Age village west of East Tilbury. Like many
archaeological sites in the area, it was destroyed, in this case covered by rubbish-
dumping. Some tracks such as the "coal road" may date back to this period.
There are also Roman roads in the area and there is evidence for a large but still
unknown Roman building at East Tilbury.
Tilbury is a Saxon name meaning the fortified village of Tilia. In the early
Christian era, Tilbury was chosen as the site for an early church contemporary
with the Saxon chapel of St Cedd at Bradwell. The site of this has never heen
found.
The later history is also fascinating. There is Tilbury Fort itself, still set in
grazing marshes and started in the reign of Henry VIII. The present fort dates
from 1670 when it was meant to be a defence against the Dutch. It is the finest
example of such a building in the country.
Perhaps Tilbury's finest hour was the visit of Queen Elizabeth I on August 8th
and 9th, 1588 at the time of the Spanish Armada. This event must have
surpassed a Hollywood spectacular. This is where she delivered her famous speech
and reviewed thousands of troops. Here she watched a huge mock battle close to
West Tilbury village and attended a grand banquet on the summit of Broom Hill
in the Earl of Leicester's sumptuous pavilion. What a sight it must have been.
This then is an area wonderfully rich in history, which makes it all the more
depressing when one thinks of how much of this legacy has been lost for ever
beneath bricks and mortar, or destroyed by gravel extraction and rubbish
tipping.