Allhallows-on-Sea
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Allhallows-on-Sea is a modern holiday village on the River Thames north of the ancient village of Hoo All Hallows.
Alhallows as a holiday resort
It was just after the First World War that Kent County Council and London County Council proposed the transformation of the remote and inhospitable marshland hamlet of All-Hallows into a major seaside resort, after the fashion of Victorian Herne Bay. By the 1930 the river front at Avery Farm, about a mile north of the village, was set to become a holiday resort.
Alhallows was planned as the best holiday resort in Europe, putting Southend, with its well-established Kursaal amusement park and the world's longest pier just across the Thames estuary, to unrepentant shame. Allhallows was to have the largest swimming pool in the UK with the first artificial wave generator in Europe, and an amusement park then four times the size of the Blackpool pleasure beach complex.
The railway line was constructed with these proposals in mind. A large 1930s style pub, the British Pilot, was built to supersede the village inn, the Rose and Crown Tavern (still open). Just opposite the parish church, and old village shop (now long closed) and on the new approach way to the station an art deco styled block of flats was added. But the overall plan never attracted the number of holidaymakers expected.
Allhallows railway station
Allhallows-on-Sea railway station was opened at the end of Avery Way (on the south side) on 16 May, 1932, built to serve the newly planned holiday destination. It became a part of the South Eastern & Chatham Railway network, acting as a terminus from the branch line out of Gravesend.
Allhallows failed to attract enough visitors and British Railways (Southern Region) shut the station in 1961. It has since been demolished and the site was sold for use as a holiday caravan park. The water tower (listed) still stands among the caravans.
The former Station Hotel has been converted into private flats. Extensive residential development has encroached upon the hamlet status of the population elevating the ancient parish at last to that of a village. Allhallows in 2004 escaped a grim end when government consultations finally agreed it would not be necessary to demolish the village to replace it with a car park for the third London international airport at Cliffe.
Allhallows at war
On the morning of 15 October, 1940, a Royal Air Force Squadron was involved in combat over the river Medway, and during an altercation with a Messerschmitt Bf109, the Spitfire R6642 was damaged by enemy fire, forcing Pilot Officer J W Lund to bale out. The aircraft crashed on the shoreline of the River Medway near Allhallows at 11.50am. The pilot was rescued by the Navy, but his aircraft remained a wreck on the tidal mudflats of Allhallows until the summer of 1998 when the site was excavated.
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