2005 Fused DKP Malm bricks, Shoebury East Beach.

2005 Fused DKP Malm bricks, Shoebury East Beach. This has been a religious site since September 2005 since it hosts the annual Ganesh Visarjan or Hindu Unity Day of Shree Jalarum Mandir, Greenford & Southern. But it became a public beach, when not a war zone, when Dale Knapping (1823-1878) purchased the end of Rampart Road from the Gunnery School, giving access to the beach between George Street and Blackgate Road beside his Shorefield Brickworks. The fused pair of reject yellow bricks on the beach are still marked DKP, meaning Dale Knapping Proprietors, while the more worn red bricks could have been made by the later Jackson Co. and Eastwood Ltd. who also loaded bricks on to barges from the beach. The origin of the public beach is presumably 1859, although that is unclear from the excellent book Shoeburyness a History by Judith Williams (2006, Phillimore, Chichester) showing photographs of barges loading among Edwardian picnic parties.

1995 with 1928. Thorpe Bay Methodist Church rebuilt opposite St. Gregory’s, seen as roof in background. Smooth and fine grained red and modern blue bricks simulated a Victorian window, but it can be seen that the mortar thickens upwards because the blue bricks have not been cut into wedges in the old way.