Mucking Marshes Landfill

Covering hundreds of acres of former gravel quarry, it was one of the largest landfills in Western Europe and had been filled for decades with municipal and commercial waste floated thirty miles down the River Thames in barges to Mucking Wharf.

[citation needed] The barges, each carrying dozens of distinctive yellow containers, were a familiar, though rarely commented-upon, sight along the Thames through Central London.

The former landfill site itself, although it dominates the village of Mucking, is guarded and surrounded by a perimeter fence more than four miles (6 km) long.

Cory Environmental, the operators of the site, gated off Mucking Wharf Road so that views of the Thames meeting the North Sea could only be accessed via a circuitous footpath through the neighbouring village of East Tilbury.

[2] The site also houses the recently completed Cory Environmental Trust Visitor Centre, a drum-shaped, timber-clad building designed by van Heyningen and Haward Architects.