The North Kent Marshes is home to a huge variety of wildlife species but it hasn’t always been that way. In this blog, Ranger Mel takes a look at the industrial past that has shaped this landscape.
Did any of you see Winter Watch on TV a couple of weeks ago – with the piece on Oare marshes? If you did you will have seen cameraman and local birder, Richard Taylor-Jones, exploring the gunpowder and explosives industry of the Faversham area – its demise following a fatal explosion in 1916 – and the ability of wildlife and birds to take over and make these sites their homes again.
When I moved to the north Kent coast several years ago I confess I had generally been used to annual childhood holidays to rocky and sandy beach areas like the Gower coast in Wales or the cliff-tops and rough seas of the southwest of England. Consequently, when my job as Bird Wise ranger brought me to explore the environments of the Thames and Medway estuaries, including the Hoo peninsula and the Isle of Sheppey, I was surprised, but in a good way. Jam-packed with the remnants of its working past, some might say it’s not ‘pretty’ but actually it’s better than that – it’s stunning. Evidence of the area’s working history, visible at every turn, just adds depth and context to the natural history stories of this coastline.
We work across 30 or so sites from Gravesham to Whitstable and nearly all have a fascinating industrial history, evidenced by decaying barges, overgrown canals, disused railway lines, abandoned chalk quarries and stone forts.
By the very virtue of its geographical positioning and geology, much of north Kent was perfect for military use, transport of goods, chalk extraction, explosives and brick and cement making industries. These abandoned sites have re-grown over the years as scrub and bush providing cover, invertebrates and berries for our summer and winter foraging birdlife.
Many a now-untrodden field has become tussocky-heaven for the voles and mice which will feed Kent’s growing population of Marsh Harriers, falcons and owls. Decaying structures on the coastal fields and the foreshore now provide nesting sites, look-out points and roosting safety for all sorts of bird species.
Thames and Medway Canal
At the most western point of our working range is an area of Gravesham known Shorne and Higham marshes. This is still quite an industrial area and if you are walking there we advise looking out for the warning flags which will indicate when the police are using it as a practice shooting range! You also will see this listed, rather helpfully, on OS maps as a ‘Danger Area’.
If you walk along the Saxon Shore Way here you will get great, close-up views of the endless stream of huge container vessels making their way upstream to port. These can create pretty large washes up the banks and you will often notice the feeding waders pitching up vertically to escape the unforeseen backwash.
If you stay a little further in land you can follow the route of the disused Thames and Medway canal. Work began on this in 1800 and since then it has had an interesting military, engineering and social history. It used to connect the Thames at Gravesend with the Medway in Strood and ran through the huge chalk tunnel between Strood and Higham which is now a railway tunnel. The towpath now feeds into the Saxon Shore Way and has been developed into a Sustrans cycle track. Wildlife will always rush to colonise a canal as soon as it is cut and flooded, but once it’s fallen into disuse, the natural rewilding process – minus the boat traffic – will increase the biodiversity no-end and create a mixed-habitat, wildlife corridor for all manner of species. If you want to find out more about the history of this locally important canal take a look at this link;
https://www.thamesmedway.co.uk/index.html
Cliffe Pools Nature Reserve
It’s true that nature and wildlife will take back many an industrial site or disused building in their own time but often much of their progress and success can be attributed to teams of passionate volunteers (such as the Thames and Medway canal volunteers) or to wildlife conservation charities working hard to create new habitat.
Just east of the previous marshes is the wonderful Cliffe Pools nature reserve, managed by the RSPB. This is one of the most important sites for birdlife in the southeast.
The Cliffe area has a fascinating, multi-layered history probably first recorded as a crossing point of the Thames during Roman times. Hard to believe now, but likely because, east of this, the river widens considerably. This section is relatively narrow even now but back then sea levels were much lower, making the Thames unnavigable further upstream of Cliffe. Causeways were established at these sites and archaeological finds indicate a trading point here between Kent and Essex tribes.
Roll forward a couple of thousand years and we now see a derelict fort (built from 1861 and costing £162,937), abandoned chalk quarry faces and numerous old ground excavation pits. The chalk and clay geology of the area (two main components of cement) gave rise to a thriving cement-works industry from the mid-1800’s and it is mainly this that has left its mark on the area. The Francis Chalk Quarry cliff, just at the end of Salt Lane, is designated and protected as a Regionally Important Geological Site (RIGS). Imagine; this wall of ‘Upper Chalk’, was formed, layer by layer in a marine environment, when Britain was covered by a warm tropical sea – at the end of the Cretaceous period – just before the dinosaurs went extinct! Not that the Peregrine that often sits aloft gives two hoots about that!
The 230-hectare site is now a wildlife haven of fresh pools, saline lagoons, scrub, grassland and saltmarsh. The RSPB works hard to keep the flooded pits at the optimum depth which attracts huge numbers of overwintering ducks and waders and, there is obviously enough small mammal action for a healthy and growing population of Marsh harriers, Falcons and the odd Peregrine.
Grain Tower / Isle of Grain
There is so much abandoned military and industrial history on the Hoo Peninsula it’s hard to choose which area to write about but let’s go eastwards to the Isle of Grain. It’s one of our favourite places but probably a site which many people in Kent are unfamiliar with, apart from when it nearly became the Thames Estuary airport. “Phew” said the birds! This is also the spot where J M W Turner would have sat to sketch the wonder that is “The Fighting Temeraire” in 1838.
Its most famous derelict structure is the Grain Tower, a Napoleonic era fort built between 1848-55 at about 500 metres offshore and where the Medway meets the Thames – primarily constructed to protect the dockyards of Sheerness and Chatham. This old gun tower, now in its peaceful retirement phase, is a quiet and undisturbed resting and roosting point for birdlife and its causeway at low tide opens up a superb mollusc and invertebrate buffet for the Oystercatchers and Curlews which feed here in large numbers.
Just as walk down to the sea from the car park you might get a glimpse of the circle of wooden posts from a number of deliberately scuppered old barges. On several summery occasions I have seen a pair of elegant Terns taking a rest on these posts as they scan the depths for their fish supper.
Brickfields of Lower Halstow and Conyer Creek
Leaving the Hoo Peninsula and heading eastwards on the mainland Kent coast we come across two more of our old industrial sites known for their array of wildlife and birds. Both were once brickworks.
Firstly, Lower Halstow. This area has a long history of brickmaking, again due to the necessary raw geological materials underfoot. The bay itself is home to 1000’s of overwintering waders and wildfowl and it never fails to deliver. Such are the rich pickings, as well as the usual suspects it’s not that uncommon to see Whimbrel, Spotted Redshank, Greenshank and Med gulls – all in plain sight at high tide, with the historic barge, the Edith May, as backdrop. If you’re lucky you might also see the resident Kingfisher sitting on the outflow gate by the barge.
The long-abandoned brickfield itself is now an area of low trees, scrub and bushes; a haven for Fieldfare and Redwing seeking out berries in the winter and, come summer, it is alive with birdsong. Probably one of the most surprising things about the immediate foreshore is that everything underfoot is made up of broken bits of glass bottles, earthenware and china crockery of all descriptions. It is known locally as ‘glass bottle beach’. Thames sailing barges brought London rubbish to the beach and returned with their cargo of bricks. Much of the glass is melted and melded together because this Victorian refuse – especially the ash and cinders within – was used in the brickmaking process. As the tide has washed in and out for decades over this debris, birds such as Turnstones have moved in at low tide to turnover and pick amongst the broken pieces of teacups and Dundee marmalade jars for a meal of hidden invertebrates.
The Lower Halstow brickfield is not dissimilar to the one at Conyer Creek – just a little way towards the east. In the mid 1800’s Conyer had seven large-scale brickfields but all were gone by the 1980’s and the sites were cleared. Now you can still wander the remaining criss-crossing concrete paths amongst the scrub and bushes that have colonised this once busy industrial site. On the east side of the creek (the Oare side) where the brickfield once stood, you can walk along the riverbank, past the old stone wharf, and be assured of seeing the full range of winter waders and ducks. Much like Lower Halstow, the bushes and scrub make excellent feeding grounds for winter thrushes, breeding songbirds in the summer and – the most precious of sounds…Nightingales and Turtle Doves… if you’re lucky.
Moving eastwards we come past Oare and Faversham, once areas of a thriving explosives industry, and head towards Seasalter and Whitstable. Nowadays, the main maritime industry on the foreshore takes the form of oyster farming. Historically, only native oysters were dredged from the seabed a little way out but now, with the current farming of Pacific oysters one cannot fail to notice the 1000’s of iron oyster trestles stretched across the mudflats at low tide. As well as the first passenger railway (aka the Crab and Winkle line) and the test site for the first diving helmet – Whitstable was famed for a successful shipbuilding industry. According to the Whitstable Community Museum, Whitstable shipwrights, sailmakers and ropemakers were responsible for building and repairing over 283 ships over 4 centuries, at the many yards which existed along the beach from the harbour to the golf course. Although first making use of the open beach, yards eventually built slipways to haul vessels of up to 400 tons up the beach for repair.
There is not much solid evidence left of this industry, but this photo shows the rotting posts of the only remaining boatbuilding slipway, poking up at low tide like the vestiges of a submerged forest. These posts are now home to a varied collection of mussels and winkles and a favourite spot for waders to pick off the fallen shellfish. Not least, as the tide comes in they serve as a handy ‘you can’t disturb me’ resting point for our own population of Turnstones.
Most of these locations are not only a haven for wildlife, but a tranquil, calm and relaxing hideaway in which we can enjoy nature. When sitting at places like Lower Halstow it is difficult to imagine the hustle and bustle of the industry that once took place there. I am struck that the phrase ‘habitat creation’ always refers to wildlife and yet projects and organisations, which create wildlife habitat from old industrial sites, are also creating spaces for community benefit, where people can meet and walk and be with nature. Obviously right now it can only be you and A. N. Other for exercise but roll on the day when we can meet our friends for an impromptu bird walk to….um….frankly anywhere!