Situated upon a low chalk escarpment overlooking the Thames marshes, Cliffe offers views of Southend-on-Sea and London.

The Grade I listed St Helen's Church at Cliffe was built about 1260[5] and was constructed in the local style of alternating layers of Kent ragstone and squared black flint.

During the 14th century Cliffe was the site of a farm owned by the monks of Christ's Church, Canterbury, when the village had a population of about 3,000.

In the late Middle Ages the village of Cliffe supported a port, which thrived until a disastrous fire in 1520 stifled its growth, marking a period of decline, accentuated by the silting of the marshes of the Thames Estuary.

In 1824, construction of the Thames and Medway Canal was begun, providing work for able-bodied villagers and other labourers who came to the area, increasing the population again.

Henry Pye was an innovator in farming practices promoting the use of Aveling and Porter steam engines, locally built in Rochester, for use in ploughing and threshing.

It stood about a mile from the river and included a Goshead aerial cableway, which ran alongside the road constructed by the soldiers of Cliffe Fort, then disused.

The Alpha site, however, became exhausted by 1950, and further digging led to extensive flooding, as quarrying exceeded the depth of the water table.

A second quarry was begun to the north of Salt Lane, which is still the main access road to Cliffe from the cement works area, on the very edge of the marshes.

The water is around fifty to sixty feet deep in parts and divers explore the bed of the old quarry and other underwater features.

Planning consent was approved subject to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Peter Walker, indicating the project was in the national interest.

However, the Secretary of State, by then Geoffrey Rippon, considered that 'it is in the national interest for additional refinery capacity to be made available to meet expected requirements in south-east England'.

Old Cliffe Rectory is some two miles (3.2 km) inland from St Helen's Church, supposedly to preserve its inhabitants from the malaria on the marshes.

In the corner of the church graveyard is a Grade II listed Charnel House[15] that was used to store bodies dragged out of the River Thames estuary, thought to have been erected in the mid-19th century.

A Brennan Torpedo station was added in 1890, the rails of which are still visible at low water, and was used as an anti-aircraft battery in the Second World War.

[17] In December 2003 the government decided against the Cliffe proposal on the grounds that the costs of a coastal site were too high, and there was a significant risk that the airport would not be well used.

[18] A prominent feature where the marshes meet the river for many years, the Hans Egede was a wooden, auxiliary three-masted ship, built in 1922 by J. Th.

As the tug Fossa from Gravesend was towing her up Sea Reach the strain on the structure, which had become weakened over the years, proved too much, causing her to take in water and sink.

Following a succession of storms, high tides and strong winds in December 2013, a large section of the ship's hull has now broken off and lies on the shore further round from the rest of the wreckage.

[20] Cliffe marshes stood in for the paddy fields of Vietnam in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film Full Metal Jacket.