Egypt Bay from High Halstow Circular

SOUTH EAST

WALK

Egypt Bay from High Halstow Circular

Saturday 23 March 2019

Egypt Bay. Sounds exotic, distant, possibly even fictitious. A make-believe location in an imaginary land far, far away.

When I first read about this mysterious place, I was not reading a fantasy novel set in some far-flung corner of make-believe with swashbuckling pirates and smugglers. Nor was I reading some Dickensian style period piece set in the 19th century.

If I am honest, the unremarkable if not slightly boring truth of the matter is that I was reading an article about wild camping. Or, to be precise, I was reading the comments that had been left by other readers of the article on wild camping.

What is remarkable, however, is that Egypt Bay is not to be found by looking at a map of the Middle East or by sailing around the Caribbean under the Jolly Roger but, instead, by following the River Thames, a river that I can see from my window as I write these words, upstream from Gravesend for just nine miles.

What is, perhaps, even more remarkable, is that you could have easily have read about Egypt Bay in a Dickensian classic or a story about smuggling and never have known where to find it. But I will come to that a little later on.

The River Thames is synonymous with the City of London and the colourful history that is associated with it. But follow the river away from the capital in either direction and you will still find it to be a surprisingly rich source of history and so it is with Gravesend and the surrounding area.

Many people will be aware of the connection to Pocahontas who died at Gravesend in 1617 aged 21 and was buried in St George’s Church but a lesser known fact is that, in 1381, a combined French and Spanish force sailed up river and attacked Gravesend burning the town to the ground and sailing off with the surviving inhabitants to be sold as slaves.

Needless to say, in the centuries that followed, the area was seen to be vital to the defence of the capital and in protecting the vital shipping route that capital relied upon. All along this section of the river, you will find evidence of fortifications, gun towers and batteries along with ordnance factories, bunkers and top-secret training grounds.

But, while I was researching the origins of the name ‘Egypt Bay’ it was the sad events of September 27th, 1946 that caught my attention.

Captain Geoffrey de Havilland Jnr, son of Geoffrey de Havilland Snr the founder and owner of the de Havilland Aircraft Company Ltd was killed while conducting test flights over the Thames estuary in preparation for an attempt at the world air speed record. Captain de Havilland was the Chief Test Pilot at the company and had been conducting high-speed tests in the experimental de Havilland DH 108 “Swallow” TG306 aircraft when it suffered catastrophic structural failure in a dive from 10,000 ft at Mach 0.9 and lost both wings.

The remains of the Aircraft were found in the mud at Egypt Bay the following morning. Geoffrey De Havilland’s body was washed ashore at Whitstable on 7th October 1946.

I had already decided to walk out to Egypt Bay before I had read about Geoffrey De Havilland and the TG306 accident. My plan was to park at High Halstow and then walk the three miles to Egypt Bay across the marshes.

If you look at the map below, the villages of Cliffe, Cooling, High Halstow and St Mary Hoo are all several miles from the modern-day shoreline of the Thames this is because, before the area was significantly drained it was marshland and a breeding ground for mosquitos. Even today, looking at an OS map, it looks like a very wet area. So wet that the nearby Cliffe Marshes doubled as the paddy fields of Vietnam in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam war film ‘Full Metal Jacket’.

On the Hoo Peninsula, life expectancy for adults was just thirty years. Poverty and malnutrition were widespread in the 18th century and in the marshlands on the peninsula, many died from malaria known locally as marsh fever and this remained the case until the cause of malaria was discovered in1890. By 1895 much of the marshland had been drained and the number of deaths decreased dramatically.

Even before I reached the last building, a small farm at Swigshole, I felt like I was walking in a remote and desolate land. High Halstow is set on a low ridge that drops you slowly on to a massive, flat, empty landscape crisscrossed with ditches and fleets.

It was a Saturday, about midday and in any direction I looked, I could see no one. I was completely alone. I remained alone until I reached the small hamlet of St Mary Hoo.

There is a small beach at Egypt Bay where I sat for a while looking out over the Thames to Canvey Island and watching the ships sail by. To the west, in the distance, I could see the large cranes of the London Gateway Port. Standing in a row with an almost animal-like appearance.

There was nothing that I could see that indicated that a tragic accident had occurred here. No memorial stone or plaque. No information board. Nothing at all in fact.

Nor could I see any evidence of the Prison Hulks said to have been anchored here in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Google ‘Charles Dickens’ or ‘Great Expectations’ along with “Egypt Bay” and you will find numerous mater of fact references telling you that Egypt Bay is the location where some of these Prison Hulks were moored. I almost expected to bump into Abel Magwitch himself while I was there. However, as far as I can tell, the Prison Hulks were moored at Lower Upnor, some six miles south of Egypt Bay, on the River Medway.

Dickens, who lived in Chatham as a young boy, knew the area well and owned Gads Hill Place, Higham which he used as a country retreat until his death in 1870. I suspect that having the Prison Hulks moored at Eygpt Bay suited his purposes better and used artistic license to relocate them.

St James Church in Cooling is largely accepted as being the churchyard in the opening scene of Great Expectation but some believe that it was really St Margaret’s in High Halstow while others believe it was the churchyard in Higham itself. Cooling and High Halstow are much closer to Egypt Bay which is actually located within the parish of High Halstow but no one can be completely sure because Dickens never revealed the location. Perhaps he drew inspiration from all of them and applied some more artistic license.

So, what about smuggling? On my OS map, there was a lonely building one kilometre south of Egypt Bay for which there seems to be no public right of way, road or path leading to it. This is Shade House and is supposedly a derelict Shepards House that was used by the notorious North Kent Gang who would land their contraband at Egypt Bay. The house was designed in such a way that all of its windows face inland which was to allow the occupants to see anyone who might be approaching.

So what was the origin of the name ‘Egypt Bay’? In truth, no one seems to know but it has been suggested that it may be linked to Phoenician coins found on the Hoo Peninsula which is seen as proof that the area had trading links with the Phoenicians who originated in the Levant which, at the time, bordered Egypt. Perhaps that it simply more artistic license.