Isle of Grain

Isle of Grain (Old English Greon, meaning gravel) is a village and the easternmost point of the Hoo Peninsula within the district of Medway in Kent, south-east England.

The Creek was filled up, and had a road across it for 40 years until 1823, when the Lord Mayor ordered it to be again reopened, so as to give about eight feet navigation for barges at spring tide; thus saving a distance of fourteen miles into the Medway, and avoiding the danger of going round by the Nore.

Since the removal of livestock from marshy areas, the number of native mosquitoes has greatly declined, and Britain's last recorded outbreak of malaria was in 1918.

Concrete emplacements and shelters were added during the World Wars when the tower, in addition to mounting guns, was used as a boom control point.

In 1879 the South Eastern obtained an act for a branch leaving their North Kent line at a point about (3.5 miles) from Gravesend ... to Stoke ...

In the following year powers were obtained for an extension, (3.5 miles) long, to St James, in the Isle of Grain, where a deep-water pier was to be built on the Medway.

Bignell records that she "... took a rather curious fancy to Grain as a chosen departure point for trips to Germany" and there are claims that Port Victoria "was built essentially as a railway station at the end of a line from Windsor".

From the beginning of World War I regular patrols were made along the Thames estuary from this station, as part of English Channel defences.

But soon the course of the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon a wild and unexplored shore.

—Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the SeaA suggestion in 2003 to site a new London international airport to lie just west of Grain aroused a lot of local opposition, as well as from environmental groups such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

These, called the Thames Hub, would include building a new four-runway airport on the Isle of Grain, partially on land reclaimed from the estuary.

[7][8] On 13 April 2012, Richard Deakin, the head of National Air Traffic Services, commented that "the very worst spot you could put an airport is just about here ... We're a little surprised that none of the architects thought it worthwhile to have a little chat.

London Stone , Yantlet Creek
The Grain Tower (constructed in 1855), and causeway seen at low tide 2008
Anti-tank obstacles on the beach at the Isle of Grain
The oil-fired power station from the village.
Isle of Grain and the Medway Estuary from the air