As Leader of Thurrock Council, one of my Administration's core priorities is the recovery of civic pride.
Residents will, I hope, already be noticing an increase in cleaning and greening across the borough: better maintained parks, cleared footpaths and public spaces, and improvements to important civic buildings including the Thameside Theatre, Thurrock Museum and Library.
When we became the Administration in May 2026, I said that too much of our borough appeared unkempt and abandoned. That did not reflect the community I know — a community that is hardworking, ambitious and rightly proud of its history.
And it is this remarkable history that we must now recognise, celebrate and build upon.
Working with local businesses, schools, colleges, community organisations and heritage partners, Thurrock Council will seek to develop a Thurrock Heritage Trail: a network of walking, cycling and jogging routes connecting some of the extraordinary people, places and events that have shaped our borough.
The first trail will highlight five historical hotspots.
1. Purfleet-on-Thames — Bram Stoker and Dracula
Victorian Purfleet was a popular riverside destination for visitors from London, with the Royal Hotel — previously known as the Purfleet Hotel and Wingrove's Hotel — offering accommodation, entertainment and its famous whitebait suppers.
Purfleet subsequently became one of the principal English settings in Bram Stoker's Dracula, published in 1897. There is strong local evidence that Stoker knew the area, and Thurrock's historical research considers it likely that he visited Purfleet before writing the novel. The landscape, railway, river, high walls and buildings of Victorian Purfleet all appear to have contributed to the setting he created for Count Dracula's English home, Carfax.
2. Tilbury and Chadwell Marshes — Daniel Defoe
The trail will then take us towards Tilbury and the Thames marshes associated with Daniel Defoe, one of the great pioneers of the English novel.
From around 1694/95, Defoe operated a tile and brick works on the Chadwell/Tilbury marshes for approximately nine years. He also built his own house there. Long before Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719, Defoe therefore knew this extraordinary Thames landscape as businessman as well as writer. The marshes and riverside environment later appeared in his writing, including Moll Flanders.
3. West Tilbury — Elizabeth I and the Armada
From there the trail climbs towards West Tilbury, where in August 1588 Queen Elizabeth I reviewed the English army assembled to resist the threatened Spanish invasion.
It was here that Elizabeth delivered the speech that became one of the most famous expressions of national defiance in British history, declaring that although she had the body of a “weak and feeble woman”, she had “the heart and stomach of a king”. The army itself was encamped on the higher ground around West Tilbury rather than within today's Tilbury Fort.
4. Horndon-on-the-Hill — in the footsteps of Queen Elizabeth
The trail can also retrace the historic connection between West Tilbury and the beautiful medieval village of Horndon-on-the-Hill.
The precise details of Elizabeth's movements and accommodation have been debated by historians, but contemporary evidence records her staying at the house of Edward Rich in Horndon on 8 August 1588. Essex Record Office identifies this as Saffron Garden, while other traditions have associated her visit with Arden Hall. Saffron Garden has strong Tudor associations and provides another remarkable link between modern Thurrock and the events of the Armada.
5. Grays — Alfred Russel Wallace and The Dell
For those fascinated by natural history, the trail will also celebrate Alfred Russel Wallace, the great naturalist, explorer and independent co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of evolution by natural selection.
Wallace lived in Grays from 1872 to 1876. He commissioned The Dell, an extraordinary house constructed largely from concrete — making it one of Britain's earliest surviving houses built using the material. Wallace laid out its grounds himself and lived and worked there while writing his major two-volume work The Geographical Distribution of Animals, published in 1876.
The Grade II-listed Dell survives today in College Avenue, providing Thurrock with a tangible connection to one of the most important scientific thinkers of the Victorian age.
This should only be the beginning, it is a trail that can keep growing.
As we uncover, restore and celebrate more of Thurrock's remarkable history, future councillors, officers, historians and residents should be encouraged to add new branches to the trail.
We could connect our historic parish churches. We could tell the stories of Thurrock's forts, docks, industries, writers, scientists, soldiers and sailors. We could connect the trail to the borough's extraordinary relationship with the Thames.
And at Stanford-le-Hope we can signpost visitors to Ivy Walls Farm, where the Polish-born novelist Joseph Conrad lived with his wife Jessie from 1897 to 1898. Conrad — seaman, novelist and one of the greatest writers of the English language — found in this remote Thames-side landscape a place to live and work. The original farmhouse no longer survives, but its location and Conrad's association with Stanford-le-Hope are commemorated locally.
The purpose of the Thurrock Heritage Trail will not simply be to look backwards.
It will encourage people to walk, cycle, jog and explore their borough. It can support our schools, our local businesses and our visitor economy. It can connect our towns and villages and help restore neglected paths and public spaces.
Above all, it can remind us that Thurrock is not an anonymous place on the edge of London.
This is a borough of Elizabeth I, Defoe, Stoker, Wallace and Conrad; of forts and ancient churches, marshes and industry; and of a Thames that has connected Thurrock to Britain and the wider world for centuries.
Recovering civic pride means taking care of the place where we live. But it also means understanding why that place matters.
Thurrock has an extraordinary story. It is time we told it.