The End Of An Era

August 30, 2016 by Rob Kahl

This Week Sees The End Of An Era

In Leigh on Sea and the surrounding area we are blessed with a vast array of iconic buildings. Places like The Kursaal in Southend, The Grand in Leigh on Sea, Hadleigh Castle and of course the world famous Southend pier are all fixed in our memories and form part of the towns varied and distinct history.

We all remember where we were when the pier burnt down or what we were doing when The Bell Hotel in Leigh on Sea recently fell down and this week, sees the demise of another iconic building even though it isn't even in the same county as us!

On Wednesday of this week at 11am the chimney at the power station on the Isle of Grain will be blown up! For as long as I can remember the chimney has been on our skyline and clearly visible from Shoeburyness to Benfleet. According to Google it is 801 ft high, over 40,000 tons and has been there for over 40 years.

I am sure that a lot of people will be extremely happy to see the last of the chimney, but I for one will be a little bit sad. Lots of people that I speak to that live on the coast or are particularly looking for a property with the view of the water love the fact that we are based on the estuary.

The diversity of traffic going up and down the river and the shear amount of activity draws people to the water and means that I rarely see a property with a sea view that hasn’t got a pair of binoculars for people to keep an eye on what is going on.

A large part of the traffic are the commercial ships going in and out of the docks and the industrial nature of The Thames means that power stations like that on the Isle of Grain and further up the river have been a fixture for decades. Inevitably though it is now out of date and has been replaced and so will be resigned to the history books and our horizon will be changed forever.

I remember valuing a house years and years ago in Benfleet Road for a chap. The property was amazing and had a massive garden of over 10 acres with views over Hadleigh Downs. Because of the angle of The Downs either side the views over the estuary were almost framed and right in the middle of the view was the chimney at the Isle of Grain. Quite rightly the gentleman was very proud of his property and asked me what I thought of the view. I said it was magnificent except for the chimney which I described as a bit of a blot on the landscape. He then proceeded to tell me how him and his fathers construction company built the power station, the chimney and that for them, It was the jewel in their building portfolio and what an incredible amount of money they had made out of it. I obviously tried to back track and say what a feature it was on the skyline but I think he could tell that I was trying to dig myself out of the hole I had dug! Surprisingly I didn't get the house on the market.

Features like the chimney are extremely iconic and whether you like it or not I urge you to take the time to watch it being flattened on Wednesday, it should be quite the spectacle.