Template:Wp-Isle of Grain-History

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Extract from the Topographical Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland by John Gorton, 1833:

"GRAINE, ISLE OF, co. Kent

"A parish in the Hundred of Hoo, lathe of Aylesford, opposite to Sheppey at the mouth of the Thames; it is about three miles and a half long, and two and a half broad and is formed by Yantlet Creek running from the Medway to the Thames. The Creek was filled up, and had a road across it for 40 years until 1823, when the Lord Mayor ordered it to be again reopened, so as to give about eight feet navigation for barges at spring tide; thus saving a distance of fourteen miles into the Medway, and avoiding the danger of going round by the Nore."

The severing of the road resulted in an inconclusive High Court case in 1824, and by 1835 the causeway had been reinstated. The goods route from the Medway Towns to the upper Thames Estuary was later shortened by the Thames and Medway Canal, although this route, too, was abandoned.

In 1855, as part of military defences guarding the Thames, Grain Tower, a fort, was built. It remained in use until 1946, having been used during both World Wars.

In various warm years the incidence of "marsh fever" (malaria) was extremely high. Since the removal of livestock from marshy areas, the number of native mosquitoes has greatly declined, and Britain's last recorded outbreak of malaria was in 1918.

Yantlet Creek at the south of the Yantlet Line was the downstream limit of the City of London's ownership of the bed of the River Thames. It is marked by a London Stone beside the mouth of the creek. Its successor for navigation purposes, the Port of London Authority, also owns the river bed down to here but has navigation policing rights on a debatable area of estuary or sea as far as the seaside resort of Margate which has normal sea salinity.

The Isle of Grain was the site of Grain Fort, built in the 1860s and used for coastal defence until the 1950s. The fort was almost completely demolished about 1960, leaving only the original earth rampart, complete with some tunnels running underground.

Grain Tower, about a quarter of a mile off-shore and accessible at low tide, originated about the same time as the main fort. Later additions, consisting of concrete emplacements and shelters, were added during the World Wars, and the tower was used as a boom control point. The boom was a chain supporting a huge antisubmarine net across the two rivers, preventing entry by German U-boats.

The south of the Isle is an important industrial area. Until 1982 it was home to a major oil refinery. Construction of this facility for British Petroleum (now BP) took from 1948 to 1952, and it suffered flooding almost immediately when the North Sea flood of 1953 breached the sea wall.

In the 1990s the refinery site was chosen for a purpose-built facility to make concrete lining segments for the Channel Tunnel. There was not the space to make the sections at the Shakespeare Cliff construction site near Folkestone at the tunnel's entrance, so the Isle of Grain was used because large quantities of granite aggregate could be delivered there by ship from Glensanda in Scotland, and the finished sections could then be transported by a pre-existing rail link to east Kent. Following completion of the Channel Tunnel, the site is now part-occupied by Thamesport, the UK's third largest container port. The remainder is allocated for industrial and warehousing use under the Thames Gateway project.

Next to the former BP site is Grain Power Station, built in the 1970s, which previously burnt oil. It was mothballed in 2003, but reopened in 2006 to provide up to three percent of the National Grid supply. The oil-fired power station was demolished in 2015 and a new gas-fired station now stands on the site. Another major installation is a new Grain Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import facility.

The Isle of Grain is the landing point for the Britned undersea power cable between The Netherlands and the UK. It will also be the landing point for the NeuConnect interconnector linking the UK to Germany, planned for completion in 2028.