West Tilbury - Heritage Buildings

Heritage Buildings

Most notable is Tilbury Fort (English Heritage), a mid-late 17th century star-fort commanding the narrow (900 metres wide) passage of Thames. It is well documented in available guide books, though these concentrate largely on the fort’s strategic concept, layout and architecture. The military men’s social life is less accentuated. Public access is year-round and there are useful exhibitions within.

Other heritage buildings are either central or peripheral to the inland village itself and, taken as a group, demonstrate admirably the local vernacular, plan and style of the late 15th to mid 19th centuries within the locality. West Tilbury Hall, Condovers (now Walnut Tree Cottage) and Marshalls are all early Tudor timber framed (oak and elm) hall-houses with crosswings. Of these, West Tilbury Hall is the largest, with fine Tudor brick cellars under its rear projection. This is the only moated site within the parish, one fragment only of the wide dry ditch remaining at the south garden edge, next to the churchyard. Polwicks at Low Street represents the newer Renaissance house of the early 17th century (about 1620), again timber framed but of double-pile arrangement (two houseframes side by side), while Manor Farm (currently called The White House), is of the late 17th century, being essentially one pile or houseframe of double length to the previous. It reflects foreign softwood timbers coming in from Scandinavia (Norwegian Fir) and is largely weatherboard clad.

The move to brick which became a village feature from the 18th century is represented in The King’s Head (c.1770s with additions) but this, like the Post Office of c.1810 has been stucco faced. The upper windows of this important building above a pleasant shopfront bow, have been atrociously replaced in the late 20th century. The Old Bakery on the Green is therefore the best example to seek – a compact yellow stockbrick home of small scale and with appropriate windows, built in the 1830s. A little outside the village, at Gunhill Farm and the Mill House Farm, are two characteristic early Victorian villa-type residences, erected for prosperous farming and milling families, the first in 1839 and the latter in 1850. They reflect the comfortable style of town-influenced architecture which replaced outdated farmstead homes throughout the district over much of the 19th century.

Well House, which overlooks the Green, gives the impression of being an early Victorian residence of yellow stock brick. Its interior however, reveals late 15th century timber framing. A probable crosswinged hall-house of that period seems subsequently to have been remodelled to a 17th century building of elongate form. This is shown upon Charles Sloane’s map of 1742. In 1794 it was described in the Sun Fire Assurance ledgers as ‘Lath and Plaister and tyled’, serving at that period as the rectory house for parson David Evans. About 50 years later, its frontage would be cased in with local brick.

Its origins are possibly very ancient, for in the deeds of Merton College, Oxford is a document of 1272 relating to West Tilbury, to which several local landholders were witness, including ‘John of the Well’ (de fonte). The Saxon word ‘well’ meant a spring of water, or natural fountain. The pond adjacent to Well House is fed by a gravel spring, which is dammed at its south-western end above the small valley.

The Schoolhouse. Situated to one side of the Memorial Hall, the schoolhouse is a gabled slate-roofed building of yellow stock brick with red courses, a typical example of late Victorian ‘board-school’ architecture. Currently it stands empty, its final use having been a council depot for storing and repairing grasscutting equipment. The iron railed and tarmaced playground looks onto Rectory Road. It opened in 1876 with capacity to take 66 children from infant stage through to school-leaver age, an average attendance in the mid-1880s being 55 scholars. The 1891 census indicated a considerable gipsy camp had arrived on the West Tilbury common and the presence of this population together with new docks overspill led to the extension of the schoolhouse in 1894. In 1913, it was interestingly described in the local newspaper as a ‘comprehensive’ and as late as the 1930s, under the charge of a headmistress and 2 teachers, as many as 118 children were on its register. Closure came with Friday, 22 July 1960 when transfer to the newly formed Torrells school, some distance off at Little Thurrock, commenced for seniors, the younger children moving mainly to Chadwell. The headteachers’ log books are not present in any known public archive – a significant loss to the social story of the village.