Gravesend in Kent is not a town we think of as a holiday resort, but such it was for Londoners who made the boat trip down river, at least until the development of the rail network made more distant sandy beaches easily accessible. Day trippers alighting at Gravesend’s pier could stroll along the promenade towards the fort built by Henry VIII on the last bit of high land before the Thames estuary rapidly became wider and flanked on both sides by marshland and creeks. More energetic visitors could walk up Windmill Hill. Tea shops offered refreshment and at the top of the hill there was a park with a maze and the spectacle of a bear and a lion to provide distraction. The park is still there, but the maze and the animals are no more. Another popular attraction was Rosherville Gardens, slightly upstream of the pier. Gravesend was also where many travellers bound for the Continent would transfer to a stagecoach, after travelling down river from Billingsgate on what was called the ‘Long Ferry’. In 1830 over one million passengers used the ferry. It was the coming of the railways that changed all that, as described below.
Gravesend’s train service today has never been better. The Hitachi Class 395 ‘Javelin’ trains on HS1 bring St.Pancras only 22 minutes from the town. Running on what is now called the ‘classic’ third rail metals in Gravesend, the Javelins join the HS1 line from the Channel Tunnel a short distance to the west at Ebbsfleet, to plunge shortly afterwards into a tunnel under the Thames, emerging near Purfleet, before more tunnelling before Dagenham Dock, through Stratford, almost to St. Pancras itself. The preCovid level of service has been cut to hourly, with a partial restoration being announced in November 2021. The service on the third rail lines has trains to Charing Cross via Sidcup, Victoria via Bexleyheath, and a Thameslink service through the city to Luton. Eastwards, trains run to seaside towns on the Kent Coast, Canterbury and the Channel ports.
Gravesend’s first railway
The arrival of the railway was not
