Allhallows, Kent
Template:Infobox England place Allhallows is a village and civil parish on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, England. The parish is bounded on the north side by the River Thames, the northernmost part of mainland Kent, and in the east by the course of Yantlet creek, now silted up. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,649, and covers an area of 23.99 km².
Allhallows village is in two parts: the ancient Hoo All Hallows and the 20th century holiday colony Allhallows-on-Sea.
Hoo All Hallows
Hoo All Hallows is clustered round the parish church of All Saints, from which the village takes its name: Hallow meaning Saint. The Hoo (in 1285 written Ho) refers to a spur of land, and is thus a common element of place names on the spur or peninsula. Hoo All Hallows' parish registers date from 1629, and in 1841 the population was recorded as 268 people.
All Saints church itself dates from the 12th century. It is the only Grade I listed building on the Hoo peninsula and is built of flint and stone with a lead roof. It has a west tower, north and south porches to the nave, and a chancel]. The earliest part is the west end of the nave, followed by the south arcade. The north arcade dates from the early 13th century, while the chancel arch and screen are 14th century. Money was left in 1472 "to the werkes of the body of the church" [1], possibly to the nave. The chancel was heavily restored in 1886–91. A notice in the church announces, "Previously scheduled for demolition under proposals for a London orbital international airport", referring to the 2004 putative Cliffe airport scheme.
Yantlet creek was once part of a navigable and fortified trade route used from Roman times. The Saxon Shore Way passes close by the old boundaries, indicating silting over many centuries.
Avery Farm
Avery Farm was in Saxon times on the tip of a promontory which was an island in its own right belonging to the Saxon Heahburh. It is thought she may have been an Abbess, given that the farmlands that were then her property were part of the lands granted to the monastery at Peterborough by Caedwalla in the 7th century (Place Names of Kent: J Glover). A branch of the Pympe family lived on an estate with a mansion known as Allhallows House.
Allhallows-on-Sea
The modern holiday village of Allhallows-on-Sea lies to the north of the ancient village.
In the 1930s, the Southern Railway, in attempt to open up the estuary at this point as a holiday resort, opened a short branch from the Hundred of Hoo Railway branch line to Grain. The terminus was north of the old village, and the new part of the settlement grew up around the station. The railway named its resort Allhallows-on-Sea in all its publicity. The planned development never took place, partly because of WWII, but there is a now a holiday park and some residential properties on the estuary shore.
It was just after the First World War that Kent County Council and London County Council proposed the transformation of the remote and inhospitable marshland hamlet of All-Hallows into a major seaside resort, after the fashion of Victorian Herne Bay. By the 1930s the river front at Avery Farm, about a mile north of the village, was set to become a holiday resort.
Alhallows-on-Sea was planned as the best holiday resort in Europe, putting Southend, with its well-established Kursaal amusement park and the world's longest pier just across the Thames estuary, to unrepentant shame. Allhallows was to have the largest swimming pool in the UK with the first artificial wave generator in Europe, and an amusement park then four times the size of the Blackpool pleasure beach complex.
The railway line was constructed with these proposals in mind. A large 1930s style pub, the British Pilot, was built to supersede the village inn, the Rose and Crown Tavern (still open). Just opposite the parish church, and old village shop (now long closed) and on the new approach way to the station an art deco styled block of flats was added. But the overall plan never attracted the number of holidaymakers expected.
Allhallows railway station
Allhallows-on-Sea railway station was opened at the end of Avery Way (on the south side) on 16 May, 1932, built to serve the newly planned holiday destination. It became a part of the South Eastern & Chatham Railway network, acting as a terminus from the branch line out of Gravesend.
Allhallows failed to attract enough visitors and British Railways (Southern Region) shut the station in 1961. It has since been demolished and the site was sold for use as a holiday caravan park. The water tower (listed) still stands among the caravans.
The former Station Hotel has been converted into private flats. Extensive residential development has encroached upon the hamlet status of the population elevating the ancient parish at last to that of a village. Allhallows in 2004 escaped a grim end when government consultations finally agreed it would not be necessary to demolish the village to replace it with a car park for a suggested third London international airport at Cliffe.
Allhallows at war
On the morning of 15 October, 1940, a Royal Air Force Squadron was involved in combat over the river Medway, and during an altercation with a Messerschmitt Bf109, the Spitfire R6642 was damaged by enemy fire, forcing Pilot Officer J W Lund to bale out. The aircraft crashed on the shoreline of the River Medway near Allhallows at 11.50am. The pilot was rescued by the Navy, but his aircraft remained a wreck on the tidal mudflats of Allhallows until the summer of 1998 when the site was excavated.
Notes and references
- ^1 Quoted in Newman, 1969.
- Newman, John (1969). Series ed. Nikolaus Pevsner (ed.). the Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald. Penguin Books. pp. 123–4.
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External links
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- ^ Newman