Originally known as Hagelstowe (in Textus Roffensis), Hagelsto or Agelstow, it was named from an Old English word denoting a high, holy place. The area has been occupied by Romans, Saxons and Normans.

During the 19th century, farming practice diversified into fruit and hop growing, seed production and market gardening. Land was acquired in the parish for military use in the 20th century although no major facility was situated here. Defensive structures and earthworks were constructed during both world wars, but have left few visible remains. Post-war change has most obviously taken the form of residential expansion. Some of the initial demand was for industrial housing and this was provided by the local authority. However, the majority of new development has been private, attracted by the varied scenery of the parish.

The village remained small until after the Second World War, comprising the church, a school, two shops, a pub, a wheelwright's shop, and an undertaker's, with the village being served by a single policeman. Eventually some of the older houses were demolished and replaced. Churchill Place was developed and in the area behind the church, formerly known as the Square, several modern bungalows replaced five thatched cottages. From 1952 more homes were built in the village to house Isle of Grain oil refinery employees.

Development before 1800

Evidence for seasonal occupation of the marshes during the Romano-British period has been recorded, but settlement probably began in the early Saxon era on upland below Northward Hill. The name 'Halstow' signifies a holy place, potentially pre-Christian, while 'High' was adopted to distinguish it from Lower Halstow, a village south of the Medway,.

The 10th-century Grade I listed church of St Margaret at High Halstow was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and was built on the highest point of the Hoo Peninsula, overlooking the rivers of the Thames and Medway.

The northern part of the parish encompasses an extensive area of marshland between the river Thames and the higher land, traversed by the notably wide waterways, Decoy Fleet and Salt Fleet. The area was utilized for salt production between the 1st and 4th centuries and has been subsequently 'inned' to form marshland pasture.

The marshes have also been used historically for other activities including wild fowling and smuggling. At least one decoy pond, a central area of water from which emanated narrowing channels in which the birds were trapped, was created near Decoy Fleet. The pond was apparently dug between 1654 and 1697 and had an adjacent farmhouse and outbuildings, all of which have now gone.

A second pond may have existed and another farmstead, still known as Decoy Farm, was built on rising ground to the south. The isolation of the marshes, along with the availability of a landing place in an inlet known as Egypt Bay and places of concealment such as the wooded Northward Hill, made the parish a suitable location for smuggling. The scattering of cottages and farm buildings that stood on the marshes inevitably acquired a dubious reputation and one surviving building, Shade House, occupying a lonely situation north of Decoy Fleet, was said to have been used by smuggling gangs to hide contraband.

In the 1760s, land was being used as ash plantations for hop poles.

The War Department purchased land in the parish in the early 20th century for training purposes and a number of batteries and trench systems were established. Earthworks identified from aerial photographs near Longfield Avenue, since flattened, may have been the remains of a First World War practice trench. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, an anti-aircraft battery was established at Fenn Street, supplemented in 1940 by an unmanned reserve battery site at Decoy Farm. Anti-invasion measures included a line of pillboxes running between Allhallows and High Halstow.

The Street runs slightly downhill through the village towards the North, before the land rises again to Northward Hill, at 209 feet the highest point of this part of the Peninsula. On the right is the black and white half – timbered cottage which used to be one of the village forges. On the left is the school, built in cedar. The road passes through the old council estate, but a turn to the left swings it up to Northward Hill.

Here on the crest of the hill, amid ancient oaks, elms, sycamores ash, the thick hawthorn, elder, blackthorn, spindle and bramble clumps, is the National Nature Reserve, an RSPB bird sanctuary of approximately 700 acres. It includes the largest Heronry in England with some 180 pairs of breeding Grey Heron.

These marshes are of outstanding ornithological value. Large numbers of European white fronted geese, widgeon and shell-duck winter here and in the adjacent parishes. There are also significant numbers of mallard, Shoveler, pintail and teal. They also provide a breeding place for various different varieties of duck, and in the tidal area an extensive feeding area for thousands of waders.

Owing to its isolated position, history has largely passed High Halstow by. Undoubtedly the time of greatest stir here must have been in 1450, when the village priest John the Clerk, was inciting peasants and labourers to rise and follow Jack Cade in his uprising for better conditions.

John Clerk’s name is mentioned in three different places in the list of those pardoned, which indicates its level of activity.. We do not know how many he led out of High Halstow, but we do know that one of them was “Simon Dalam, husbandman”, and this name probably has some connection with the present day Dalham Farm.

The village will have seen Wyatt and his followers on their way to the siege of Cooling Castle {1554}, but little other activity developed until the growth of smuggling in. eighteenth century. The reclaimed land now provides extensive pasture for sheep.

In the 18th century, poverty and malnutrition were widespread across the peninsula, with High Halstow no exception; adult life expectancy was then about 30 years, lessened by ague, or marsh fever, the names for malaria, which proliferated in the North Kent Marshes and waterlogged farmland, a stronghold of the mosquito. The cause of malaria was discovered in 1890, and within five years the number of people falling ill with the disease decreased sharply as farmland and marshes were drained. This task was performed in no small way by Henry Pye, after he moved to the area.

The village's cricket club has played in the area for almost 120 years. Ever expanding, the club now has Three Saturday sides, one Sunday side and three colt’s sides. They play their home matches at Rayner's Meadow, which is situated in Christmas Lane, and at the Hundred of Hoo School, Hoo.

Some places have so little to tell about themselves, and that can be part of their appeal. Take Egypt Bay, for example. It’s a small bay on the northern coast of the Grain Peninsula, an overlooked piece of land jutting out of the Kent mainland, caught between Essex and Sheppey. The River Thames flows by at its widest, in the act of turning into the sea.

The peninsula is a flat territory of reclaimed marshes, farmland, occasional villages and some light and heavy industry on its eastern fringe. Located in the middle of the populous south east of England, it is extraordinarily empty.

There are some attractive spots – the High Halstow nature reserve in the centre on the one high piece of land; the quaint village of Cliffe and the seemingly misplaced castle at Cooling (home once to Sir John Oldcastle, unwitting model for Falstaff, and now home to the musician Jools Holland), defending a land no one would ever think to invade.

If you go to the High Halstow Nature Reserve, having taken in the epic view across the Cooling Marshes to the west, follow the road and then path northwards for a couple of miles, past Decoy Farm, over a couple of gates that seem locked for no reason, up a rise in the land where a sea defence has been built, and there you are – at Egypt Bay.

Coastline near Egypt Bay, Thames to the left, Decoy Fleet to the right

Egypt Bay as a name dates back to the early 1800s at least (it turns up in newspaper references) and probably was established in the eighteenth-century, though no map of the area from that time that I can find names it. Undoubtedly its name derives from what was the nearby Egypt Marsh Farm (the exact location of which seems to be unknown), which will also have provided what was once the name for the marshland surrounding the bay, Egypt Saltings. This part of the peninsula was reclaimed around the 1630s, and maybe it was then that the term ‘Egypt’ was first used. It could have been a corruption of an owner’s name, or a reflection of some interest of theirs. Perhaps it was biblically inspired. We may never know

The marshlands were malarial. Few could live there, and the few obliged to work there would not have lived long. It was wretched territory, well into the nineteenth century, when the bay was a landing point for smugglers and in the 1860s, a coastguard hulk was stationed offshore. Such a hulk may have been seen by Charles Dickens, who walked these lands and weaved them into ‘Great Expectations’ (published 1860).

Egypt Bay on the Hoo peninsula was a typical Thames estuary landing spot, though its soft and changing outline has now been made regular and permanent by the concrete sea defences.

Inland from the bay, there's still a reminder of the smuggling activity that was once rife here. Shade House was built specifically to aid the landing of contraband on the southern shores of the Thames. Significantly, all the windows of this peculiar box-like building face inland to provide a good view of anyone approaching within a mile or so.

The cottage is even now extremely isolated, but would have been more so in the 18th century. The marshes were malarial, and most people lived on higher ground further inland.

Local stories tell of vaulted brick tunnels leading from Shade House towards the river, but there is no visible evidence today to back up these tales. However, we do know that the North Kent Gang used Shade House in their smuggling activities. The landed goods were taken from there and were supposed to have been hidden under the pulpit of Cooling Church

An old man called Dusty Wellard who had lived in Cooling about 50 years ago remembered his father telling how he was paid to drive a flock of sheep across the marshes to cover up any tracks left by the smugglers.

It can never have been very accessible from the landward side, but the waters of Egypt Bay once came much closer than they do now. Perhaps in days when the estuary was full of small working craft there may have been some trade to be had out here.

Following disastrous floods in the early 1950's, a new seawall was built further north, enclosing many acres of what had been salt marsh, and leaving 'The Shades' further from the river. (Circled on the map)

A few years later the building was refurbished by a Cooling farmer.

ARTEFACTS
The Phoenicians came from a land called RETENU (CANAAN) which had a direct boundary with EGYPT.

Just a thought! Did they sail up the Thames to trade and come across what we know as Egypt Bay, and named it such due to the unlikely event of finding a sandy beach in an unlikely spot on the River Thames? Stranger things have happened!

Charles Darwin’s ship, ‘The Beagle’ ended its days in the 1840s as a coastguard vessel, moored off the Essex coast on the other side of the Thames to Egypt Bay.

NORTHWARD HILL

The wood is now a National Nature Reserve administered by the RSPB. Park at the end of Longfield Avenue in High Halstow and walk through the fenced alley to Forge Common. Cross the stile and bear left across the common to the wood

One smuggling trip in this area is particularly well-documented, and especially interesting because of the insight it provides into the organization of smuggling in the early 18th century.

The story is told in a deposition made in 1728 by a couple of Medway men. They travelled across the Channel in February 1726, and bought tea in Ostend. It was a very small-scale operation, since in all the men brought back just 400lb, plus a few yards of calico and some silk handkerchiefs. There were seven men on the ship, ‘The Sloweley’, and the trip was organized a bit like one of today's cross-channel shopping excursions: everyone bought tea, and paid their passage in tea.

Once the goods had been landed, they were carried to Northward Hill, and concealed in the woodland that you can still see on the hill. By the time the tea and fabric had been hidden it was three in the morning, and two of the group departed, leaving some of their fellows on guard, perhaps the plan was to rendezvous the following day to divide up the profits.

After a long night in the cold, the three men who were left behind went into the village to get food, and when they returned to the hiding place, two more of their fellows joined them. By this time though, the silk and calico had disappeared, and since the tea was in six bags, it proved impossible to give each man his exact share. The delay in distribution provided the preventive forces with an opportunity — there is a suggestion that one of the group was an informer — and at 5 O’clock, four customs men arrived.

We'll never know what sort of a deal took place in the gathering dusk on Northward Hill, but whatever happened, it wasn't entirely to the benefit of the customs authorities. They took ¾ of the tea, but the smuggling conspirators retained the remainder, and were never prosecuted.

The most likely explanation is that the customs men were 'squared', and simply sold the tea they had seized in order to line their own pockets. The mastermind of this and many other similar trips was one Edward Roots of Chatham.

Though this small trip was organized on a co-operative basis, most of the others followed more conventional business lines, with a London financier, and a 'fence' in Blackheath who had organized an efficient distribution system through the pubs of Deptford. It's no coincidence that High Halstow is within sight of Shade House. In fact, the whole of the Hoo peninsula played an active part in the free-trade, aided by the area's reputation as a malarial and mist-shrouded swamp.

This is the Viewpoint on Northward Hill RSPB nature reserve. From here you can see across the Thames grazing marsh an invaluable wildlife habitat. If the bean counters had got their way, this hill would no longer be here as it was due to be levelled to raise the marsh above seal level for the construction of Cliffe Airport.

Almost the entire vista south of the river would have been tarmacked over for the airport. The plans were only abandoned in 2003 (Glyn Baker, Geograph).

In 2013, The Airports Commission produced a shortlist comprising two runway options at Heathrow and one at Gatwick. The Commission rejected all Thames Estuary airport proposals (RSPB).

The area is centred on High Halstow village which retains its medieval core and includes a medieval church and tithe barn and several medieval buildings. Within the village, however, older remains have been discovered including Bronze Age and prehistoric features.

Outside the village several enclosures and cropmarks have been seen in aerial photographs. Metal detectorists working around the village have discovered numerous examples of artefacts, particularly from the Iron Age to the medieval period.

A number of Late Iron Age gold coins have been found to the north of High Halstow, whilst remains of Bronze Age dated artefacts have previously been recorded south of the village.

Within the development area itself, various crop and soil marks have been observed indicating the presence of buried archaeological remains and landscapes. These crop and soil marks include a ring ditch, possibly representing the ploughed out remains of a prehistoric burial mound, along with enclosures and other features. The area also has some potential to contain remains of Pleistocene or Palaeolithic interest.

The Red Dog public house is one of the oldest buildings in the village and was once the Parsonage. Today the church building still stands as a lasting monument of the faithfulness of God and the continued witness of his people.  

The Red Dog goes back to at least 1851. In the past it has also been called the Spotted Dog Tavern and (just) Dog

Red Dog Open 2024

South Eastern Gazette, 24 April, 1860.

Inquest.

On Saturday last an inquest was held by Thos. Hills, Esq., at the "Dog," High Halstow, on the body of a man, name unknown, whose body had been found washed ashore from the river. The body was first seen by a man named Thos. Bellamy, who discovered the deceased lying near the sea wall. Deceased was dressed as a sailor, but there were no marks about him which would lead to the identification of the body, which was much bruised from the action of the sea.

Verdict, "Found drowned."

At the time of the Doomsday Book, it is recorded that the church paid the usual chrism fee of 9 denarii to Rochester. The present building of St. Margaret’s is mainly of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and is distinctive by the red brick restoration work carried out to the tower. It is a pity that the impressive spire shown in the Sixteenth century map, and again in another of 1719, is now truncated.

However the earliest fabric of the present building, dedicated to St Margaret, has been dated to the early 13th century. A tithe barn stood in the village, to the east of the church, until the late 20th century.

The name is Saxon and derives from the phrase ‘Holy Place’. The original church building may well have been built over a previous pagan site. In the ‘Textus Roffensis’ (c1120), the name is written Hagelstowe, in other records as Halgesto and Agelstrow.  One of the earliest references to the church is a record of a payment for sacramental oils of 9 denarii to Rochester diocese in 1080-6.

The building is of ragstone and at first sight appears entirely a Perpendicular church. There is a clerestoried nave, with south porch and a lean-to south aisle continued as a chapel nearly to the east end. Two large windows with panel tracery are on this side. Wills of 1472 and 1474 refer to new work on the chapel. The south aisle is now partly occupied by the organ which was completely overhauled in 1975. A carved reredos, a memorial to the Longfield family which supplied two Rectors was moved to this position in the 1960’s when the Jacobean communion table was restored, and the sanctuary furnishings simplified.

There is evidence that the Church was remodelled, not rebuilt in the late 15thC. A quoin in the west wall shows that the nave once had no north aisle. The proportions of the Chancel roof also look 13th C, not 15thC. Moreover, the arches from the chancel to the north and south chapels are Circa 1200. The south arch is pointed but unchamfered. The south east arch responds with angle-shafts and upright leaves on the capitals droop over in a Romanesque way. The north arch is just chamfered and the angle-shafts have moulded bases and capitals so is a little later than its fellow. The chancel arch is 15thC and has a niche of the same period north of it.

The nave arcades are early English: three bays with round piers, two hollow chamfers on the arches, and finely moulded undercut caps and bases and corbels east and west. The tower arch is also perpendicular, but the tower itself seems to have been entirely rebuilt in the 18thC.

St Margaret’s tower, in contrast to others on the peninsular is short and stocky, ragstone with red brick plinth, buttresses and parapet. Symolldson’s 16th C map and another dated 1719 show and impressive spire but sadly this has not survived. The font is a plain squire bowl on corner shafts linked to the central stem. The shaft mouldings appear to be early 13th C.

The glass in all the windows is plain, apart from the medieval fragments in the north window of what is now the choir vestry. The north aisle is thought to have been once the chapel dedicated to St. James, while the south aisle chapel was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Two monumental brasses are mounted on the modern wooden panels of the north west wall. It is said that they were rescued from the local builder’s workshop and were restored to the church in the early part of the last century.

The earlier brass is a half-effigy commemorating William Groby who died in 1396 and his son, also William, Rector of the Parish who died in 1399. The second brass dates to 1618 and commemorates a puritan churchman William Palke Minister of High Halstow and his wife, Ann. It is unusual in that he is wearing a Geneva gown and not a vestment of the period, and that his wife’s death was not added to the inscription after her demise. It is also one of only 5 brasses commemorating post reformation clergy.

The church possesses a silver communion cup and paten cover, the gift of the Churchwardens of the period dated 1664. The plate of St. Mary’s Church retained at High Halstow since the Hoo St. Mary’s church was made redundant and the parishes were combined, consists of a cup and paten cover. The former dating to 1573 has the marker’s mark I.C. While the patent is later 1705 and marked E.A. This earlier cup has around 50% more capacity reflecting the pre-reformation practice of the wine being reserved for the clergy only.

The tower contains a ring of six bells with a tenor weighing 9 ¾ cwt (500kg). In the key of Ab it is believed that bells have been rung at High Halstow since the mid 14thC when there were probably four. It is known that there were five bells in 1788, because of the first known peal of doubles was rung here on the 19th November 1788. The five bells were derelict for about 100 years prior to 1983 when a full restoration was carried out and a sixth bell added. A portion of the mediaeval bell frame is preserved in the tower. Full detail of the bells is displayed in the tower. The iron closing ring which was once on the south door, is most unusual and is reputed to be of Saxon origin. It is the shape of a horse’s head and is reminiscent of the Bayeaux tapestry. Sadly for security reasons it has been removed from its original position, although you may see the clear mark on the door where it once stood.

Amongst the choir boy graffiti at the back of the organ is a fascinating drawing of what looks like a WWI bi-plane. The sight of these planes would have been fairly common in the area as there was a RNAS seaplane station at Grain. The first aerial battle that ever took place over British soil happened over the peninsula on Christmas Day 1914 when a German bi-plane on its way to London was engaged by a seaplane from the Grain station.

The people of High Halstow were not just passive watchers of the two world wars but like many other towns and villages, they sent their sons off to war and sadly many of them didn’t return. They are remembered in two stone memorials in the church. Many of the names still live on in the village today through their descendants as well as names Marsh Crescent and Longfield Avenue. One of those who died in the second world war was Squadron Leader Geoffrey Longfield, the son of the Rev. Longfield. The Vicar at the time. By strange coincidence in Allhallows, which is part of the parish, the war memorial has the name 2nd Lt F.R.C Hammond who died in the first world war and was the son of the Vicar of Allhallows.

As you leave the Church there are two other features that may be of interest. The first of these is directly on the left hand side of the path as you leave the porch. It’s a series of six stone graves that some local historians believe is the setting for the opening scene of Dickens’ novel Great Expectations. The grave was wonderfully brick lined in the same shape as the stones on top. Before the houses to the north were built there was a clear view across the marshes to the Thames River where the prison hulks were moored.*

The second item of interest is the finely built lychgate on the south entrance. This was erected as a monument to the men of the parish who lost their livers in the service of their country during the first world war. Standing in the front of the gate there is a beautiful view across Hoo peninsula to the River Medway and the Medway Towns.

Originally there were a number of exterior decorations, but they have worn away over the years with just stubs of stone remaining as testimony to the stone masons’ art. The front door dates from Tudor times. It sis framed by a beautiful ornate Romanesque arch on the outside. However on the inside it is clear that the original door was taller and had a much flatter top

*Researcher’s note: Some reports that I’ve read say that these hulks were customs hulks.

If you walk down to Forge Lane just past the Red Dog Public House and walk down the lane a hundred yards or so you will see the entrance to the RSPB Nature Reserve and will have a fine view of both the Thames and the marshes.