Cliffe-at-Hoo
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Cliffe-at-Hoo, known as Cliffe, is a village on the Hoo peninsula in Kent, England, reached from the Medway Towns by a three-mile journey along the B2000. Situated upon a low chalk escarpment overlooking the Thames marshes, Cliffe offers the adventurous rambler views of Southend-on-Sea and London. It forms part of the parish of Cliffe and Cliffe Woods in the borough of Medway.
In 774 Offa, King of Mercia, built a rustic wooden church dedicated to St Helen, a popular Mercian saint who was by legend the daughter of Coel ('Old king Cole') of Colchester.
Cliffe is cited in early records as having been called Clive and Cloveshoo (Cliffe-at-Hoo).
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The ancient Saxon town of Cloveshoo
Clovesho, (or Clofeshoch), was an ancient Saxon town, in Mercia and near London, where important church councils are recorded as having been held during the years of 742, 747, 794, 798, 803, 824, and 825, representing the See of Canterbury and the whole English church south of the Humber. The location of Cloveshoo has never been successfully identified however, although it is generally thought to have been Cliffe-at-Hoo.
In Hertford between 672/3 a decision was made to hold these councils on the 1st of August every year: "in the place which is called Clofeshoch." This ruling represents the inauguration of first parliamentary system known to have operated in Britain. "There had never before been a parliament with authority enough to decide on matters concerning all the English peoples."
The Second Council of Clovesho was held in 747, one of the most important such gatherings recorded in the history of the Anglo-Saxon Church. As recorded in a manuscript preserved by William of Malmesbury: "King Ethelbald and his princes and chiefs were present." However the slow pace of change during this era meant that such councils were only occasionally required but were significant in that they had the character not only of a church synod but also of the Witenagemot. Such meetings were held at Clovesho for more than 150 years.
1200—1800
St Helen's church at Cliffe was built about 1260 and was constructed in the local style of alternating layers of Kent ragstone and squared black flint. It is one of the largest parish churches in Kent, and the only dedicated to St Helen, the size of the church revealing its past importance.
Above the porch is a muniments room containing important historical documents.
During the 14th century Cliffe was the site of a farm owned by the monks of Christ's Church, Canterbury, when the village had a population of about 3,000.
In the late middle ages the village of Cliffe supported a port, which thrived until a disastrous fire in 1520 stifled its growth, marking a period of decline, accentuated by the silting of the marshes of the Thames estuary. Nevertheless, during the 16th century, Cliffe-at-Hoo was still considered a town. However, by the middle of the 19th century the population had slumped to about 900.
In 1824, construction of the Thames and Medway Canal was begun, providing work for able-bodied villagers and other labourers who came to the area, increasing the population once again.
The canal project was a short-lived enterprise, however, superseded by the development of the railways, but the route, including the Higham and Strood tunnel (2.25 miles in length, in two sections) was used by South Eastern Railway from 1845, bringing a branch line to Cliffe in 1882.
Henry Pye
Even in 1895 the number of people contracting malaria was high but casualties begun reducing sharply after the farmer, Henry Pye, came to the area and systematically begun the drainage of the farmland and marshes thus eliminating the fever. He drained such a large area of the marsh and so improved the grazing pastures that he was called 'King of the Hundreds'.
Henry Pye was an innovator in farming practices promoting the use of locally built (Rochester) Aveling and Porter steam engines for use in ploughing and threshing. In 1878, with other farmers Pye met with the South Eastern Railway Company and petitioned for a railway to be built, resulting in the establishment of the 'Hundred of Hoo Railway Company'. The first part of the line was opened in March 1882, running from Cliffe to Sharnal Street.
Victorian Cliffe
The rise of the Kent cement industry brought a new prosperity to the ancient settlement during the Victorian era.
Alfred Francis (second son of Charles), with his son, established the firm of Francis and Co. at the Nine Elms office at Vauxhall, London, and then built the cement works at Cliffe in about 1860. Francis and Co instituted the Nine Elms cement works . These works were built on Cliffe marsh, to the west of the village where the chalk cliffs came almost to within a mile of the River Thames. The area also proved a useful source of clay.
Alfred Francis died in 1871, but in partnership his son continued to produce 'Portland, Roman, Medina, and Parian cement, Portland stucco and Plaster of Paris', also shipping chalk, flints and fire bricks, from the site.
The riverside location provided ease of transport and wharves were duly built at the mouth of Cliffe creek. A canal was constructed from the works, which gave its name to a tavern built nearby, now long demolished but remembered as the Canal Tavern.
1870-1 saw further developments to the cement works, which were rebuilt and extended, with an elaborate tramway added. Methods of extracting the chalk were basic, involving the labourer being suspended by a rope (around his waist) secured at the cliff top, from which position he would hack out the chalk, so that it fell to the ground below to be collected in a waiting railway wagon.
Further to the north of the Francis and Co works near the river, an explosive works (Curtis and Harvey) opened in 1901. Over the factories' 20-year history 16 people were to lose their lives in explosions.
Francis and Co was taken over about 1900 by the British Portland Cement Company, but after the great war the cement works began to decline, and was finally phased out in 1920-1.
By 1901 the population of Cliffe had exceeded three thousand.
Alpha cement works
Near the Francis works in 1910 began the Alpha cement works, part of the Thames Portland Cement Company. The Alpha works were about a mile from the river and included an Goshead aerial cableway which ran alongside the road constructed by the soldiers of Cliffe fort, then disused.
Alpha continued after the closure of the Francis works, which it took over in 1934. With this amalgamation an additional railway was added in 1935 to replace the cableway, linking the works with the quayside next to the fort.
The Alpha site, however, became exhausted by 1950, and further digging led to extensive flooding, as quarrying exceeded the depth of the water table. These quarries, still flooded, offer havens for wildlife, and are among the few surviving that have not been used for rubbish infill or otherwise developed.
A second quarry was begun to the north of Salt Lane, which is still the main access road to Cliffe from the cement works area, on the very edge of the marshes.
By the late 1950s the cement industry in the area was owned by the APCM, which had added a further railway line to the Hundred of Hoo railway, giving the cement manufacturers direct access to the main railway network. The works at Cliffe shut on April 1st 1970, with no further space available for quarrying, but the APCM recreation ground in the centre of the village has remained a valuable open space, with pitches for football, cricket, tennis and bowls.
In 1970 the cement industry was replaced by the Marinex gravel company, whose fleet of ships dredged gravel from the Thames estuary.
Cliffe rectory
Old Cliffe rectory is some two miles inland from St Helen's Church, supposedly to preserve its inhabitants from the malaria on the marshes. It has housed two chancellors of the exchequer, two archbishops, three deans and 11 archdeacons. Nicholas Heath, bishop of Rochester, and archbishop of Worcester also lived at the rectory. The 'living' at Cliffe in the 17th century was described as 'one of the prizes of the church'.
Anne, the daughter of Samuel Annerley, (Lord Privy Seal, 1649) married the rev Samuel Wesley, father of John Wesley, founder of the Wesleyans, also lived at Cliffe rectory.
The new rectory is within sight of the church.
Rye Farm
The Grade II-listed barn at Rye Farm, in Common Lane, Cliffe dates from the 1570s. It is described as a 16th-century Grade II barn "with archaic details." Beneath its present asbestos roof is a timber framed three bay barn with weatherboarded walls and a traditional hipped roof. It includes an ancient wagon porch.
Cliffe Fort
Cliffe Fort is a Royal Commission fort built in the 1860s on the edge of the marshes to protect against invasion via the Thames. A Brennan Torpedo station was added in 1890, the rails of which are still visible at low water, and was used as an anti-aircraft battery in WWII. It is now inside a gravel extraction site and is inaccessible and very overgrown, and can only be viewed from the riverside path.
The RSPB at Cliffe
In 2002 the UK government proposed as an option for the expansion of air travel capacity in South-East England that an airport be built at Cliffe. Estimates of the final cost of the Cliffe option ranged from £11.5bn to £23bn. That figure however did not include the cost of compensation for direct and indirect habitat loss, which would have run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
British Airways stated: "We don't think it is possible to build a new airport in the time scale needed for new runway capacity in the southeast of England."
The RSPB were at the forefront of the consultation process, arguing the proposal would be "the single most destructive development affecting nationally and internationally protected wildlife sites in the UK."
The Society highlighted a number of key issues concerning the overriding significance of the area, and its unique international importance for birds, including large numbers of Bewick's swans, Brent geese, White-fronted geese, Shelducks, Gadwall, Teal, Ringed Plovers, Grey Plovers, Knot and Black-tailed Godwits, and other wildlife. It pointed out:
i. The Cliffe area is heavily protected by UK and European conservation laws.
ii. "Passenger safety - situating a major international airport where planes would take off and land through an area that supports concentrations of up to 200,000 wading birds, ducks and geese, poses a major risk of bird strikes on a scale that could easily down aircraft, with disastrous consequences".
The Government's own Bird strike Avoidance Team has said of Cliffe: "There is a very serious potential bird strike risk at the new airport site. Indeed, it is difficult to envisage a more problematic site anywhere else in the UK."
iii. "Technical challenges - Environment Agency staff have said that if the airport is built at Cliffe there is a real possibility of flooding in London, as well as in the Cliffe/Cooling marshes area and that in the long term a second Thames Barrier may be required in the Gravesend/Tilbury area".
In December 2003, in its Aviation White Paper, the Government dropped the option for an airport at Cliffe. "At last the Government has accepted the blindingly obvious," said the RSPB's Chief Executive, Graham Wynne.
Trivia
Cliffe marshes stood in for the paddy fields of Vietnam in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film Full Metal Jacket.
References
- Perry Haines RSPB.
- Shamel Hundred. D.S. Worsdale.
- Isle of Grain Railways, Adrian Gray.