Summary : An early 20th-century wooden jetty, located about 1km northeast of Lower Hope Point, built around 1916 in association with the adjacent remains of a former explosives factory. The remains of the jetty were noted during research as part of English Heritage's Hoo Peninsula Landscape Project.A field assessment of the site was undertaken by Wessex Archaeology in 2005 on behalf of Kent County Council as part of the North Kent Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment. The remains of the jetty were recorded as monument 'WX17747': a steel pile and grid structure on the foreshore, consisting of three rows of square-section wooden piles, with a 30m wide at the river frontage. Individual piles measured 0.3m x 0.3m in section and 5m tall, and two horizontal timbers and one diagonal brace also survived. |
More information : An early 20th-century wooden jetty, located at TQ 72343 79380, about 1km northeast of Lower Hope Point. The remains of the jetty were noted during research as part of English Heritage’s Hoo Peninsula Landscape Project. It was built around 1916 in association with a large Government-controlled expansion to Curtis’s and Harvey Ltd’s early 20th-century chemical explosives factory (NMR Monument number: TQ 77 NW 154, uid 1517194). The wartime expansion was undertaken in order to meet increased demand for naval cordite during the First World War (1).
Documents relating to the sale of HM Cordite Factory in 1923 describe the jetty as timber-built, measuring 97 feet long by 8 feet wide (29.5m x 2.4m), with a wider staging area at the far end where the river reaches 20 feet deep at high water, and noted that it was erected and maintained under a licence from the Port of London Authority, and as such was subject to annual payments. The remains of the jetty were noted during research as part of English Heritage’s Hoo Peninsula Landscape Project (1, 2).
The remains of the timber jetty are not easily identifiable on historic aerial photographs but, photographs taken in 1946 clearly show the embanked earthwork of a factory tramline leading to the location of the jetty from the northwest corner of a group of buildings related to cordite manufacture (1, 3, 4). (1-4)
A field assessment of the site was undertaken by Wessex Archaeology in 2005 on behalf of Kent County Council as part of the North Kent Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey. The remains of the jetty were recorded as monument ‘WX17747’ (Kent HER monument number: TQ 77 NW 1022): a steel pile and grid structure on the foreshore, consisting of three rows of square-section wooden piles, with a 30m wide at the river frontage. Individual piles measured 0.3m x 0.3m in section and 5m tall; additionally, two horizontal timbers and one diagonal brace also survived. (5)
The remains of the wooden structure were photographed from the air in 2011 as part of English Heritage’s Hoo Peninsula Landscape Project. (6)
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