So sad to see that the Worlds End Pub at Tilbury has been destroyed by fire.
This pub was on a regular walk that Keith and I used to do along the north shore of the Thames (before the withdrawal of the Gravesend-Tilbury Ferry made access difficult). We have on occasion stopped there for refreshments too.
It is thought that there had been a tavern on this site since the middle of the 17th century, at about the same time as the building of the nearby Tilbury Fort, one of a number built to defend London and the upper reaches of the Thames. This was long before Tilbury town existed and the whole area was just marshland.
The location has been known as World’s End since 1667. It is reputed that this came about after a visit by Samuel Pepys during the Dutch blockade of the Thames that year. Pepys is reputed to have commented on the sites location that it ‘felt like the end of the world’. The pub was originally called the Ferry House and then the Lamb, but became the World’s End in 1778.
Originally sited near the dock of a Gravesend-Tilbury Ferry (which ran until 2024), the uses of the surrounding land have been an agricultural market in the 19th century, a military base preparing horses during WW1 and more recently an international cruise terminal to the west and the sprawl of the Port of Tilbury to the east beyond the site of Tilbury Fort, which today is preserved as a historic monument.
So sad. Now the fire is out very little remains.
