Located in Rectory Road and on the southern edge of the great common field, the hall was built using funds raised within the village and by donations from local landowners.

Earlier agricultural regimes over the parish embraced mixed farming (cattle, grasses, cereals, beans) upon the 'upland' gravel heights, where, before present demands upon the water table, numerous surface springs, brooks and ponds existed, and intensive marshland sheep husbandry (producing ewes' milk and cheeses for the local and wider markets).

[8] The 30-metre (98 ft) gravel terrace within the parish produces numerous examples of pointed hand axes of the Lower Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age); some evidence of Mousterian (Neanderthal) tools has been found close to the village centre.

In places, very ancient fragments of hedgeline survive, giving beautiful ranges of hazel, spindle, field maple, oak, ash and with representative ground flora such as red campion, stitchwort and bluebell.

Its ancient coppice stools include field maple, ash, crab apple, hornbeam and oak (Q.robur), while the woodland floor is prolific with violets, native bluebell and wild arum.

The present day field systems have developed as farming needs require from those which the above earlier maps describe, and, apart from hedge removal and general enlargement of the plots, show no marked difference (in some cases, the enclosure shapes of 1584 are still evident).

There was another comparable area off Low Street Lane, known as the 'Little Common', where similarly the individual strips (called 'dayworks' here in the medieval period) were marked out by posts or other distinguishing features.

The last of these posts – of cast iron – were re-erected in 1868 and bear the name of Sir John Cass, whose charity school at Aldgate owned an estate and strip plots here.

In due course, the two institutional land owners – the Sir John Cass Foundation and the town of Henley on Thames – erected markers to define their holdings.

[15] Earlier agricultural regimes over the parish embraced mixed farming (cattle, grasses, cereals, beans) upon the 'upland' gravel heights, where, before present demands upon the water table, numerous surface springs, brooks and ponds existed, and intensive marshland sheep husbandry (producing ewes' milk and cheeses for the local and wider markets).

[citation needed] The West Tilbury Commons at present cover above 100 acres (40 ha) of the parish, the smallest portion being the central area of village Green.

Random surface destruction in the form of scattered gravel workings ('ballast-holes') either open or infilled, is evident in places, one of the 19th-century quarries being now overgrown and serving as a pleasant scouting camp-ground.

[21] The apsidal form of the eastern churchyard, upon a considerable lynchet edge, may suggest that originally the church was positioned upon an oval mound of earlier (perhaps religious) importance.

Fragments of the 1883 period oakslat fence survive upon the east and north and there is a Victorian timber lych gate, recently retiled with red terracotta dragon finials.

The burial area was extended downslope upon a piece of agricultural land given by George Burness, of the Hall, consecrated in December 1921 and partly planted round its perimeter with cherry-plum saplings.

[citation needed] Otherwise known in recent centuries as 'The Rectory', the medieval priests' dwelling was situated in the Glebe field area, to S. East of St. James' churchyard, close to the foot of what is now Cooper Shaw Road.

West Tilbury Hall, Condovers (now Walnut Tree Cottage) and Marshalls are all early Tudor timber framed (oak and elm) hall-houses with crosswings.

Its origins are possibly very ancient, for in the deeds of Merton College, Oxford is a document of 1272 relating to West Tilbury, to which several local landholders were witness, including 'John of the Well' (de fonte).

Situated to one side of the Memorial Hall, The Schoolhouse is a gabled slate-roofed building of yellow stock brick with red courses, a typical example of late Victorian 'board-school' architecture.

Closure came with Friday, 22 July 1960 when transfer to the newly formed Torrells School, some distance off at Little Thurrock, commenced for seniors, the younger children moving mainly to Chadwell.

Early in the 18th century, an accurate county historian, William Holman, had concluded that the field of parade on that historic occasion, had been just outside the village centre near the windmill and this location was offered again in Philip Morant's 'History and Antiquities ...', 1768.

Here, overlooking the fort and Gravesend, had stood the Lord General's pavilion, doubtless with the other richly adorned tents of the Earl of Leicester's staff officers close by.

The high stone tower of St. James' is the most likely visual communications station to have served the Armada camp, conveying signals via all waterfront blockhouses, Leicester's pavilion, Gravesend and the ports of the Downs, (exploiting the Kentish hilltops).

Ranging the Thames during the invasion scare were two specially appointed watch vessels, the 'Victory' and 'Lion', while the fishermen of Leigh – a small seaport visible with moderate eyesight from the West Tilbury fields – were primed to give warning of the presence of any hostile galley to speedy English pinnaces patrolling the estuary.

On the day of her arrival by royal barge from London (8 August), the queen's progress, (after being received by the Earl of Leicester at the blockhouse fort), was across the mile or so of marshland below the church and Tilbury Hill.

After an initial visit to the camp, the queen continued on through the narrow lane which led northwards out of West Tilbury, onto Mucking hilltop and thence toward Horndon on the Hill, where she was to stay the night at the manor house called 'Cantis', the home of 'Master Edward Rich'.

Upon the morning of 9 August, a return journey through the valley of 'Howe ford' was made, climbing finally to the 'place of assemblie at armes', where the great review was to be enacted and Elizabeth's historic speech delivered.

West Tilbury's highest unwooded ground provided the queen's parade area – some 17 acres (6.9 ha) of common strip field, lying eastward from the windmill and with clear views of the distant Thames, beyond (modern) Southend.

From this dry gravely hilltop, the landscape fell to a small tree-crowned valley, across which, perhaps, a mock skirmish, 'of two battalions' described by the ballad maker Thomas Deloney: 'such a battaile pitcht in England many a day had not been seene'.

[32] Reaching the queen whilst at dinner, came the earliest dispatches from Francis Drake aboard Revenge, reporting the Spanish fleet already hastening in the eastern channel; less joyous was other news that the Duke of Parma's squadrons lying in the Netherlands, were immediately to sail for the invasion of the south of England.