A Brief History of Grays Thurrock.

Song from the Radio Luxembourg program "The Ovaltinies". The "Ovaltinies Club" first appeared in 1935.

       GRAYS THURROCK, usually known simply as GRAYS is the main centre of the borough of Thurrock.

        In 1086 Grays was a small rural manor with a recorded population of 28 and in 1670 there were only 38 houses in the parish. By 1801 it had risen in population to 677. It grew steadily to 2,806 by 1871 and then more rapidly to 13,543 in 1901 and 18,173 by 1931. By 1900 the spread of Grays extended to Little Thurrock to the east, by 1971 the population of Grays and Little Thurrock combined reached 22,815.

               Medieval Grays grew from the narrow (Old) High Street which ran north from the River Thames to join the road from Purfleet to West Tilbury, now known as Orsett Road. As late as 1777 the built up area of the town extended no further than Grays Parish Church.

        By 1843 a few houses had been built in Orsett Road, London Road and Argent Street for the workers and their families of the chalk quarry and brickworks, these homes, mainly slums in and behind the High Street were not demolished until 1928. Two large houses had been built between 1777 and 1843, Belmont Castle and Duvals near the northern boundary.

     The Old High Street contained several timber framed buildings built in the 17th and 18th century an exception to this was the brick built Dutch House which was demolished in 1950. East of the High Street at the far end of New Road was The Echoes built around 1869 which was for many years the home of the local brewery owner Charles Seabrooke, it was demolished in 1966. In Orsett Road opposite the present library stood Reed Row, a terrace of cottages with a blank rear wall facing the road, they were owned by Meeson and Errington, brick makers. Most of the parish had remained agricultural until the 19th century but from the Middle Ages onwards a small port had developed, when the coastal trade was at its peak barges were being built as well as repaired there.

A Soup Kitchen in Grays taken from a postcard dated 1905.

      Between 1880 and 1926 saw houses emerging along Hathaway Road, Bradleigh Avenue and Southend Road. Further north of Grays saw the building of private houses between 1928 and 1938 in roads such as Windsor Avenue, Heathview Road and Connaught Avenue.

A milk cart in George Street, Grays.C1910.

    Further north again and the years after the second world war saw a rise in the number of council built properties, now largely privately owned but which work began in 1948 with Leasway, Elmway and Oakway on the Stifford Clays estate,  By September 1952 the following roads were named, Crawford Avenue, Fieldway, Thorley Road and St. Mary's Walk which was finally after a couple of objections renamed Goddard Road. Palins Way was named after the Rector of North Stifford Church in 1860.

     The building of houses in Grays during the latter part of the 20th Century and the first decade of the 21st and no doubt beyond, continues with the Chafford Hundred Estate and the building work along the River Thames, the previous waste land by the Wharf Hotel amongst other areas being regenerated with the continuing demand for housing ever present. 

June 2007.

  Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) a naturalist who discovered, along with Charles Darwin the theory of natural selection.

It was in 1872 that Wallace moved to Grays and spent the next two years on building a house he named " The Dell" in an old chalk pit at the north east of the town. Finding a cement works nearby he decided to construct his house mainly of concrete (one of the first in the UK), and stayed there until 1876.

A Drawing by Alfred Russel Wallace of "The Dell"