It has the longest pier in London,[2] and retains a coastal environment with salt marshes alongside industrial land.

Work carried out at the former British Gypsum site in Church Manorway by the Museum of London Archaeological Service shows that the area was covered by a dense forest of oak, yew and alder in the Neolithic Period, which by the Bronze Age had given way in part to sedge fen.

[3] The museum's work at the former site of Erith School in Belmont Road revealed traces of prehistoric settlement and a substantial community or farmstead in the first century CE.

[4] After the collapse of Roman rule in the early 5th century, Britain was colonised by Anglo-Saxon invaders from northern Europe.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that they won the Battle of Crecganford (thought to be modern Crayford) in 457 and shortly after claimed the whole of Kent.

The earliest written reference to the area is in a Latin charter of 695, recording a grant by the Bishop of the East Saxons of land at Erith.

[9] After the death of George Talbot, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury in 1538, Erith "alias Lysnes" was granted to his widow, Elizabeth, by Henry VIII "with all its members and appurtenances, to hold in capite, by knight's service.

In 1797 Edward Hasted described Erith as "one small street of houses, which leads to the water side", and mentions annual fairs at Ascension and Michaelmas.

Its pier and nearby hotel gave hospitality for day-trippers arriving on Thames pleasure boats or by rail.

[14] On 1 October 1864 a 46½-ton gunpowder explosion blew out the river wall, exposing large areas of South London to flooding at high tide.

A crowd of navvies and soldiers directed by a local engineer managed to plug the gap just before high water.

Erith's first library, designed by local architect William Egerton and funded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, opened in 1906.

In the Second World War, the town suffered heavy bomb damage, mainly because of its riverside position near the Royal Arsenal.

[9] In 1961, Erith began to be redeveloped as a modern shopping and working environment, through the clearing of sub-standard housing by the riverside and alterations to the street layout.

Some of the new buildings, such as the social housing tower blocks, have a brutalist form typical of overspill estates built by councils in major cities as an affordable way to clear the slums.