With the new Village Beach event being held at Grays beach and park yesterday, it is interesting to reflect how 109 years ago the Grays Beach and Pond first opened.

Thurrock Museum is for one day opening a beach hut, entitled ‘Shed Load of History’ to be part of the exciting cultural and heritage event.

You cannot miss the shed as it is painted with cruise liners in 1930s style, reflecting on Tilbury Docks.

Do come in and look at your local heritage. Inside, you will discover a wide range of artefacts, photographs, maps and short history facts on the Grays industries, training ships, community and events on land and sea that happened close to the beach over the last 200 years!

In the late Victorian period Grays was going through a regeneration boom, with Tilbury Docks and large factories being sited along the north bank of the Thames in Grays and West Thurrock, encouraging greater number of people to settle close to the works.

Leisure was on people’s minds on the half-day retail holiday on a Wednesday and on Sundays.

With this in mind, the council had opened a park, established in the exhausted ‘brick earth’ clay quarries in the 1890s.

Further leisure areas were established on what was waste marsh.

Originally proposed in 1902, the pond and beach were finally opened on July 30, 1906. The beach wasartificial as this was a muddy foreshore, so sand was dredged from Margate and deposited within new bund walls and the medieval seawall.

On the day, the town celebrated, High Street traders and households decorated the road with flags and fairy lamps, while others draped flags fromtheir houses.

Hundreds of people turned out and as part of the opening a fascinating display by Mrs WB Knight, gold and silver medallist of the Royal Life Saving Society, gaveadisplayof “ornamental and scientific swimming”.

The Grays Co-operative Society produced rock with Grays running through it and Grays chocolate bars.

Today, the Grays Riverside Park is still well used and enjoyed after refurbishing in 1999, although the pond has been filled with sand and new play equipment installed ideal forkids, but youare not encouraged to paddle in the Thames!

DOWN MEMORY LANE is written by JONATHAN CATTON, Thurrock Heritage and Museum Office. Memories, photographs or objects relating to Thurrock’s past will be gratefully received for the Thurrock Museum collections. Contact by letter at Thurrock Museum, Thameside Complex, Orsett Road, Grays, RM17 5DX, call 01375 413965, make a personal visit or e-mail jcatton@thurrock.gov.uk