The coastline of Gillingham has had a rich and varied past. The park was established in the 1970s by Medway Council and takes in the various areas; of Motney Hill, Rainham Dock, Bloors Wharf, Horrid Hill, Sharp's Green Bay and Eastcourt Meadows.
Rainham Docks and Motney Hill The earliest known occupation of the area was in the
Neolithic times according to archaeological evidence found around the Rainham Docks area. This was later used by the
Romans as a burial site. Like most of Medway, the fertile area was then a major site of
hops, cherries, plums and apple orchards and wheat fields. In 1819, Motney Hill appears on maps as an island, because of its large sand deposits it was also known as 'Gritty Island'. The chalk came from a large pit, now known as
Berengrave Local Nature Reserve During high tides, barges sailed into the river near the docks, then workers known as 'Muddies' collected mud from the riverbed and loaded it onto the barges. As the tide came back in, the barges would re-float and sail to Rainham Dock, where the mud would be mixed with chalk and fired at high temperatures to produce cement. The chalk pit also closed in 1931 after the cement factory. In 1923, a pumping station and sewerage installations were built on Motney Hill. It began processing waste from
Rochester and Chatham, and then later Gillingham. Over the years, the works have been modernised and now it handles over 10 million gallons of effluent each day. The buildings on the wharf have been cleared and it is now an empty abandoned space with a concrete seawall and steel fence.
Horrid Hill works at Horrid Hill In the 1860s, Alfred Castle used to moor his vessels in Sharp's Green Bay (see more later), to collect chalk from a nearby quarry in
Twydall, before heading across the water to his two cement works on
Queenborough on the
Isle of Sheppey. The chalk was carted to the barges from the quarry, then the barges would be loaded at low tide, as the draught (
draft (hull)) of the vessel would require more water under the
keel to float off the mud. Due to tidal constraints, the barges were loaded by hand. Castle later built a wooden
jetty further down the channel leading to a small peninsula in the river. This then allowed the barges to load at high and low tides. Later, to improve the speed of loading, he built a
narrow gauge horse-drawn railway from the quarry to the new wooden jetty. Trucks on the railway had side-tippers, so could just tip their loads into the barges. The chalk was then transported to Queenborough via seven barges, owned by Alfred and his brother James. The works produced 400 tons of cement a week. It was one of the smallest cement works on record. A wharf of timber and concrete was also built to enable barges to unload
coke and clay. When the works were fully operational, Carey and Wilders employed a minimum of men who were on a shift system. It was a very bleak place to work, especially during the winter months. It gained the nickname
Horrid Hill A small car park is on the bay, from a narrow access road from Lower Rainham Road.
Copperhouse Marshes are salt marshes, so named after the
copperas works in nearby Gillingham. Copperas (or Iron(II) sulfate) was used as a dye for woollen cloth and for tanning, made by
steeping iron pyrites in wooden vats for about six years and then boiling off the liquid. After evaporation the crystals of the dye were formed. There were Copperas factories in
Queenborough in the 16th century and at
Whitstable. In 1987, the expanded Riverside Country Park officially opened, (after the initial opening in the 1970s) followed by designation of the land north of the B2004 as a country park under the
Countryside Act 1968. In 1997, Medway Council began purchasing areas of land for inclusion in Riverside Country Park, including Eastcourt Wood, Marsh Field, Mariner's Field, Bloors Wharf, Bloors Field, and Motney Field. Work was then started to remove buildings, scrap and pollution from Bloors Wharf for the new park. ==Facilities==