The London/Essex boundary - Purfleet

Boundary London/Essex/Havering
Going generally south west reaches the railway, and goes a short distance up the line before crossing it and then going wiggle wiggle along the boundary of the Purfleet Ranges.

Post to the west Wennington Marshes
Post to the north Wennington
Post to the east Thurrock
Post to the south Purfleet Reserve


Sites on the Essex side of the boundary
Garrison Estate
1970s housing

Government powder magazine,
Came from Greenwich 1760, 1771 built, yellow houses for the store keeper, clock on the garden wall. From the middle of the 18th Century a stock of 50,000 barrels of gunpowder of various grades was maintained at Purfleet in the largest store of it’s a kind in Europe. From the King's Quay it was sent to British naval and military establishments all over the world. The prevention of the possibility of fire at the magazines was considered to be so vital that, in 1772, a committee of the Royal Society gravely considered the best form of lightning rod for Purfleet. Extensions to the buildings were still being made in 1910, and parts of them were in use for another half century after that.
Georgian residence of the Master of the Ordnance. In a dilapidated state
Garrison with House for the store keeper and barracks for 100 guards.

Purfleet ranges
Five targets but with firing steps of between 100 and 2000 yards, Five targets but with firing steps of between 100 and 2000 yards
Barracks on the water edge and a shallow tank hill behind it
Purfleet stores there as the end of the deep channel where warships could moor to fit out
Rifle ranges site of the first powder mills in the eighteenth century

Sources
Osborne. Defending London

Comments

Anonymous said…
One of the five magazines is still there - it now houses a museum run by volunteers and it's well worth a visit.
PTC
Unknown said…
Unfortunately, the Ordnance House was destroyed by fire in 1972

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