At High Halstow we come into the Hundred of Hoo and into the centre of this little-visited region, projecting, out of the beaten track of everyday commerce, between the outlets of the Thames and Medway. “Hoo” signifies a height, and is often found spelt “hoe” in place-names. “The Hoe” at Plymouth is in the nature of a cliff-top. The quaint sound of the word sometimes leads to misunderstandings, as we see by the following newspaper account of some proceedings at the Gravesend Police Court, March 13th, 1914.
Following the road on to Hoo St. Mary, where the large church stands prominently ringed about with trees, the remote little village of Allhallows is reached, rather over half a mile from the shore. Here is an ancient church, with little western bellcote instead of a tower. Turning to left here, along a very bad track, the waterside will be reached at Allhallows Fort, a modern masonry work at the spot called “Bell’s Hard,” looking across to Southend, some four miles away. Southend from this point looks almost as red and yellow, and the sea, under favourable conditions, as blue, as the places pictured on the familiar advertisements of the railway companies. “Almost,” you will observe, not quite! There is nothing on earth really so gorgeous as those. But Southend, from these muddy shores, on a glorious day in July wears the likeness of some Celestial City or New Jerusalem.
In the peaceful times which until recently prevailed the only apparent inhabitant of Allhallows Fort was usually one soldier of the Royal Garrison Artillery, whose chief preoccupation seemed to be the potatoes, cabbages, and beans of a garden at the rear. A mile or so eastward is the muddy Yantlet Creek, which separates the Hundred of Hoo and the Isle of Grain. At the mouth of it, besides a coastguard station, is the obelisk called “London Stone,” marking the limits of the Lord Mayor of London’s jurisdiction as Conservator of the Thames.
The only way to reach the Isle of Grain is to return through Allhallows and proceed to Lower Stoke, a hamlet at the cross-roads, occupying as it were a strategic position midway between a number of extremely small, so-called “villages.” They have nothing in the nature of a shop, and thus the “General Stores” at Lower Stoke fulfils the enviable position of a central emporium. At Lower Stoke, turning left, we come along a marsh road, bordered with deep ditches, across a narrow bridge, into the Isle of Grain, with the railway to Port Victoria running companionably alongside. Port Victoria is glimpsed a mile or so away on the right: all you see of it, across the marshes, being the big funnels of the steamships, some huge oil-tanks, and the great lonely bulk of an hotel. There is no special feature in the Isle of Grain, whose name, by the way, has nothing to do with corn or wheat. It is cognate with the word “groin,” and means a projecting piece of land. Near the shore, overlooking the mouth of the Thames, Southend, and Nore Lightship on one hand, and the Medway and Sheerness on the other, is the village of Grain and the recently restored church, for a number of years little better than a ruin. Here, too, is Fort Grain, with the newly-built naval seaplane station.