Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Achey Loftus CBE OBE TD (January 1884 − 7 July 1987) was a British soldier, teacher and diarist.

She was Elsie, daughter of a notable landowner and agriculturalist Allen Charles Cole of ‘Condovers’ farm at Low Street, West Tilbury, whom he had married in the village church, 1916.

He died in Harare, Zimbabwe on 7 July 1987 at the age of 103 and his ashes were flown home that summer for interment in the foundation of the medieval Barking Abbey.

Though his writings about the village were limited to short articles in local newspapers (‘Bata Record’, ‘Grays and Tilbury Gazette’), Loftus envisaged a substantial work, for which meticulous research notebooks were filled.

His expansive diaries, and various other documents, including a comprehensive listing of monumental inscriptions in St. James’ churchyard, West Tilbury, collected by him while on leave in 1940, are now at Thurrock Museum (donated by his sons, Tony and Peter Loftus, October 1987).