Give Tilbury a Fort

Spent a great day out with my family at Tilbury Fort last weekend. It's an unexpected treasure positioned between the power station and piles of containers. There's three pages on the Fort in The Joy of Essex. Manager Kevin Diver gave me an after hours tour and wasn't able to unlock everything while I was writing the book, but I should now add that the officers' rooms are really atmospheric with their old fireplaces and floorboards, the museum has some great letters and artefacts and that it's great to step inside the tunnels and rooms inside the magazines (told you we had magazines somewhere in Essex!). These rooms were cells at one period, housing Jacobite prisoners as well as gunpowder and shells. Tlbury also has lots of slopes for kids to roll down and great sweeping views across the Thames to Gravesend and is built in a distinctive star shape known as a bastion fort. The shop does a fine line in Dad's Army fridge magnets, marmalade and ice cream too. All this and a nice pint of Abbott in the World's End pub afterwards.