During a walk this week round ‘the Wakerings’ in Essex, a secluded and out of the way place even though Southend looms close, I came across a wharf I’d been looking for. During the walk we found something else I found a little disturbing too. It is something the authorities must, surely, be aware of…

The wharf first. Up Mill Creek (name on modern maps) leading into the back of Gt Wakering are a collection of houseboats. They sit close by Sutton Boat Yard. The collection has grown over the last decade – some are not a pretty sight! One of the vessels has recently been moved a little, but enough to see that she’d been sat alongside the remnants of an old wharf. The wharf is shown on old maps of the late 1890s … when a brick works was operating to the north of Gt Wakering. The wharf has received some basic work – to raise a portion of it where a gang plank comes ashore… The creek has been truncated for well over 120 years too, even an 1805 map shows it to have been walled off!

The remains of the original wharf can be seen to the stern of this rusty houseboat…

Further into our walk when entering the area around Fleet Head Creek (a saltings infested place) which leads off Barling/Little Wakering Creeks there was a stretch of sea wall where the sea nearly topped it during the high tides of last December… The picture below shows this clearly … water must have been running over the top. Just a few centimetres more and the wall would have been breached! Sobering indeed for the people in that low lying area…

A little more and…