Learning from the river & industry:
Northfleet trade & industry

wharves, warehouses & kilns

The River Thames developed historically as a major communications corridor. In Roman times, Northfleet was the trading connection on the Thames and the Fleet river was used to connect Watling Street to the Thames. 

In 1796 when James Parker set up kilns along Northfleet creek to make his ‘Roman’ cement, it marked the beginning of the large cement works industry which developed along this stretch of the river. 

dockyards, wharves, kilns, brick fields and ‘chalk hills’

The map of 1860 (above) shows a hive of industry: cement works, wharfs, a brick field and ship building slips at the dockyard.

‘... we comes to Gravesend, the whole shore being low, and spread with marshes and unhealthy grounds, except with small intervals, where the land bends onwards as at Erith, Greenwich, North-Fleet, etc in which places the chalk hills come close to the river, and from thence to the city of London, and adjacent countries, and even Holland and Flanders, are supplied with lime, for their building, or chalk to make lime, and for other uses...’  Daniel Defoe A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain - 1724-6

The drama and industry of the ‘chalk hills’ defined the character of Northfleet as early as the Eighteenth Century. Similarly it is interesting to note the strong trading links with the low countries through the manufacturing of lime.