Sitting and watching wildfowl feeding the waters edge as the tide rises then making the short flight over the sea wall to continue uninterrupted feeding on the grazing marsh, give an insight to the importance of the seemingly baron and forbidding landscape. This landscape as a raw beauty once so famously described by Charles Dickens in his open words of Great Expectations, “Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; ….; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea” 360˚ views of River Thames Egypt Bay The Halstow Marshes, Cooling Marshes Northward Hill National Nature reserve Shades House Container port.
High Halstow Neighbourhood Plan
“High Halstow’s future will continue to be a vibrant community, physically separate from neighbouring villages. It will remain an attractive place to live within the peninsula and not a mere dormitory settlement for surrounding towns.”
