Horrid Hill-Medway Muddies

Medway Muddies,Marmalade,Dick Turpin and Portland Cement.
Riverside Country Park
333 Lower Rainham Road
Rainham
Kent
ME7 2XH
'Horrid Hill was once an island,barely rising above the mudflats that lie between the shore and the Medway Estuary.
It was built up to support a small cement works,with a causeway being added to connect it to the mainland and support horse-drawn railway transport chalk to cement kilns on the island.
Barges could come alongside (when the tide was high) and transport the cement thereafter.
The last vessel to berth there,a barge named the Dick Turpin,ran aground nearby in 1913.
Among the products it was carrying were jars of Dundee marmalade,examples of which it is rumoured can still be found buried in the mud'.
www.geograph.o...
'The first Portland Cement Factory appeared on the River Medway in 1851,with the secret ingredient for this new cement being Medway mud.
Throughout the 1850s the River Medway was supplying the whole world with Portland cement before similar mud was found elsewhere to produce the cement.
During this period of time the workers who dug from the estuary were called ‘muddies’.
At high tide barges would sail from Rainham dock into Medway, where the muddies then had the job of climbing over and shovelling slime/mud into the barge,until they floated off to be unloaded after the tide came in again.'
naturegirlblog...