Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The former site of Hope House: a late 19th-century domestic dwelling at Lower Hope Point, constructed sometime between 1860 and 1897, and demolished after 1915 but before 1947. It was built on the former site of a small late 18th-century coastal battery and mid-19th-century public house. For some or all of its life it was an on-site residence for senior staff at the adjacent chemical explosives factory. All that now survives of Hope House are traces of a concrete building foundation.

Monument Types

• PUBLIC HOUSE (Post Medieval - 1837 AD? (pre) to 1898 AD? (pre))

Full description

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The former site of Hope House, a late 19th-century domestic dwelling at Lower Hope Point: NGR TQ 71538 78802.

Historic Ordnance Survey maps published in 1860 and 1897 and licensing information for the Anchor and Hope noted in various editions of the Kelly’s Directory for Kent, show that between 1862 and 1895 structures relating to Lower Hope Point battery and the Anchor & Hope public house were removed and a large domestic dwelling, ‘Hope House’, was constructed in their place. Hope House had a different footprint and alignment to the battery, and a supposed photograph of the residence - a grand 2-storey property complete with tennis court - implies that it was a completely new structure erected after buildings relating to the battery and the pub had been demolished (1a). Although it is uncertain whether Hope House was built before or during Hay, Merricks & Co’s ownership of the adjacent fields for a gunpowder works, the house was still in use when Curtis’s & Harvey Ltd acquired the site in 1898 for development of an extensive chemical explosives factory. Census records from 1901 state that Joseph McCleak, the then nitroglycerine foreman at the factory, and his family were resident at Lower Hope Point.

Hope House no long stands; the building was no more than a traceable footprint by the time aerial photographs were taken by the RAF in the mid-1940s (1b), but the actual date of demolition is unknown. Traces of a firm foundation platform were recorded under a thin covering of grass where Hope House once stood. The foundation extends at least 12m x 12m, and probably spreads a little further to the north and west. At the south end of the platform, the footings of a concrete or cement wall were recorded flush with the ground and seem to denote an entrance porch or similar; from this point, traces of a track preserved only as a vegetation mark run south to join what became the main factory road for Curtis’s & Harvey Ltd chemical explosives factory. Along the edge of the drainage ditch west of the platform are the remains of a brick drain cover and traces of concrete rubble, indicating that parts of the building’s infrastructure were truncated during excavation of the new ditch line in the 1980s when the sea wall was rebuilt further in-land (1c). (25)

<1> Ordnance Survey, 1862-1875, Ordnance Survey 1:2500 1st Edition : 1862-1875 (Map). SWX11831.

<2> Bullock, 1852, Gravesend Reach (Chart). SWX8140.

<3> Coast Defences of England and Wales 1974 110 (I V Hogg) (OS Card Reference). SKE39037.

<4> A Handbook of Kent's Defences 1540-1945 1977 11 (D Bennett) (OS Card Reference). SKE32801.

<5> Saunders, Andrew, 1995, Thames fortifications during the 16th to 19th centuries (Article in monograph). SWX9358.

<6> 1946, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX9466.

<6> Wessex Archaeology, 2005, North Kent Coast Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey: Phase ll: Field Assessment Year Two Report (Unpublished document). SWX12323.

<7> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11000.

<8> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11003.

<9> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11004.

<10> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11005.

<11> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11006.

<12> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11011.

<13> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11016.

<14> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11017.

<15> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11024.

<16> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11035.

<17> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11037.

<18> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11038.

<19> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11039.

<20> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11040.

<21> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11041.

<22> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11042.

<23> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11043.

<24> 1994, Photograph (Photograph (Print)). SWX11062.

<25> English Heritage, 2013, Hoo Peninsula, Kent. Hoo Peninsula Historic Landscape Project (Bibliographic reference). SKE31432.

Sources and further reading