When was the last time a new marina was opened on the East Coast?

[GHYacht]

Small gains Marina & Leigh Marina are called that but a muddy ditch with a few pontoons filled with a marine favela of houseboats & bugger all water does not a marina make!

Today with environmental concerns over riding everything i cannot see anything new getting built, Natural England, MMO, English heritage, Environment agency, by the time that lot have had their pound of flesh you will be lucky to get a mooring for a rowing boat.

You're right about Leigh 'Marina' it's basically a hard standing that floods twice a day.

It was being regularly dredged but hasn't been touched for months so silting up fast, the new owner uses the two staff to do work for his yard in Greenwich, it could be a great asset but it isn't.

Leigh Harbour, where the fishing boats moor, has been given a big grant, part of which will be used to dredge Leigh Creek, I wonder where the mud will end up??

 

[Keith 66]

The mud will end up back where it started no matter how much money they spend on dredging. Leigh was doomed as a port from the day Southend council filled in Leigh marshes, all that salt marsh acted as a reservoir to keep the tidal flow high enough to sweep the mud away., By filling it it was condemed. The same thing happened at Smallgains creek & up at Benfleet.
Back in the early 80s when i worked down the Old Town the creek was much deeper, The coaster Contact regularly came to the Timber wharf & she was a fair old size. Cockle boats came in & out every day & kept the channel clear, unloading was done by hand so limited the amount of cockles landed, they got greedy & built bigger & bigger boats that now go out a few times a week, they industrialized the operation & put fixed wharves in further restricting the creek. There is only one way to keep that creek clear & that is to dig out the filled areas up towards the golf driving range & restore them to saltmarsh. I doubt anyone will have the will to do that.

 

[ROBMH]

Gillingham was in the 1980's and Hoo Marina a little earlier.

There are plans for the eastern basin of the old Chatham dockyard, which is due to close in a few years and the surrounding land to be made into housing. There is talk the basin will become another marina.

There was talk of a marina at Sheerness just east of Garrison Point, but this would be a non starter as the initial plans left it exposed to the NE.

Hoo Marina quite a bit earlier apparently one of the first in the country if local knowledge is to be believed

 

[Concerto]

Hoo Marina quite a bit earlier apparently one of the first in the country if local knowledge is to be believed

I believe that Berthon in Lymington was the first marina in the UK.

 

[debenriver]

We built the Tide Mill Yacht Harbour in 1963 – I think that is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest in the UK

Cheers -- George

 

[tony_lavelle]

Chatham relatively recent.

Chatham MDL opened about 2000 or soon after

 

[Concerto]

Just checked an Berthon's opened in 1968.
Lymington Marina History

 

[Concerto]

We built the Tide Mill Yacht Harbour in 1963 – I think that is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest in the UK

Cheers -- George

The original Tide Mill Marina was berthing stern to with a buoy to hold the bow stable. I remember catching the buoy between my keel and rudder in 1989 on my first visit to Woodbridge.

 

[UK-WOOZY]

starting a year at chatham this weekend. cant wait! I really liked Gillingham but the lock and pillars at each berth made me uneasy, ill practice at chatham and may return to gillingham as everyone was very friendly and love the cafe

 

[Kukri]

We built the Tide Mill Yacht Harbour in 1963 – I think that is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest in the UK

Cheers -- George

I hope George won’t want to shoot me if I say that on Monday 11th September 1972 I sailed my very tired Dragon into the Tide Mill Yacht Harbour and berthed next to a Wanderer named “Airedale” which had sailed down from Blyth in the time that we had taken to sail up from Heybridge Basin - but then she was owned by David Scott-Cowper!

We sailed out again next day without scratching anything. Beginner’s luck. I don’t recall finding the berthing system hard to use.

I can remember Bradwell marina not being there, in 1970, and then being there, in 1972, and it being spoken of in West Mersea as a new thing. I bought a boat, and a Sestrel hand bearing compass which I still have, at Woolverstone in 1973 so it must have been there.

 

[Biggles Wader]

Theres been a sort of marina at Dover since I lived there as a boy in the 60s but it was just a section of the Wellington dock.
Theres a brand new purpose built one there now------just a few teething problems before it can open though!!!!!

 

[Kukri]

Hoo Marina quite a bit earlier apparently one of the first in the country if local knowledge is to be believed

It was there in 1973.

In fact I can remember lying at anchor off Cockham Woods on the evening of Saturday 18th August and seeing the TBSC barge “Westmoreland” dried out with her bows on the marina. The tides were springs, and she must have just floated over the quay, at the afternoon high water. It was a perfectly still and calm night. On the following morning she had broken her back. And that was the end of her. The insurers sold the remains and a rebuild was started, but it ran out of money.

 

[Concerto]

Theres been a sort of marina at Dover since I lived there as a boy in the 60s but it was just a section of the Wellington dock.
Theres a brand new purpose built one there now------just a few teething problems before it can open though!!!!!

Ah, Wellington Dock, Dover. First visited in 1965 when I was 11. Cannot remember any marina berths as we had to tie alongside a wall by a metal ladder. Best memory was getting my older brother out of our black Avon inflateable so I could have a go at rowing. Little did he know I had spied a 10 shilling note floating on the surface near our boat.
What a great start to our 4 week holiday sailing from Queenborough to Torquay and back in 4 weeks with an extra 10 bob in my pocket. My brother was not so happy.

 

[Jan Harber]

It was there in 1973.

In fact I can remember lying at anchor off Cockham Woods on the evening of Saturday 18th August and seeing the TBSC barge “Westmoreland” dried out with her bows on the marina. The tides were springs, and she must have just floated over the quay, at the afternoon high water. It was a perfectly still and calm night. On the following morning she had broken her back. And that was the end of her. The insurers sold the remains and a rebuild was started, but it ran out of money.

Out of curiosity I’ve looked up some early editions of East Coast Rivers to see what my dad wrote about the Hoo and Tide Mill marinas at the time.
In the first three editions, 1956, 1957 and 1961, Hoo is mentioned as having ‘… a harbour formed by concrete barges, dries out at half-ebb. A ‘Harbour‘ is marked on the chartlet.
In the 4th edition, 1965, Jack has added that there is ‘…the Marina Yacht Club and Yachtyard’ at this harbour. In that 1965 annotated edition, marking the Hoo page, I found a leaflet published by Marina Harbour Services, describing the Marina Harbour and Caravan site at Hoo. Modelled, so it tells us, on ‘American yacht marinas which offers amenities of every kind, such as moorings, yacht yard, laying up facilities and club all combined’.
Also in the 4th edition in the River Deben chapter under Woodbridge is the following:
’Further upstream the old tidemill pool has been excavated to form a horseshoe-shaped yacht basin, where yachts can lie afloat in 6ft at all states of the tide.’
So it looks like Hoo Marina and the Tide Mill Yacht Harbour got going at around the same time, although it seems the concrete barge harbour at Hoo was in existence for a few years before 1963.
In the 1977, 8th edition of ECR Jack described Hoo Marina as ‘…one of the first marinas in the UK…’

 

[Kukri]

Thanks Jan!

I could not bring to mind what it was that the poor “Westmoreland” had her forefoot on. Of course it was one of those concrete pontoons that one used to see everywhere, and which I probably wrongly associated with the “Mulberry Harbours”.

My father used to refer to your father’s book as “The invaluable Jack Coote”. Even now whole sentences and even paragraphs from 1970s and earlier editions come to mind - following the line of the deeper water into the Blackwater in wind over tide, the buoys in the entrance to Walton Channel being carried over the bank they mark on the ebb, finding the Pye End buoy by lining up the house with two gables with the lower lighthouse…

What were those concrete barges?

 

[ROBMH]

It was there in 1973.

In fact I can remember lying at anchor off Cockham Woods on the evening of Saturday 18th August and seeing the TBSC barge “Westmoreland” dried out with her bows on the marina. The tides were springs, and she must have just floated over the quay, at the afternoon high water. It was a perfectly still and calm night. On the following morning she had broken her back. And that was the end of her. The insurers sold the remains and a rebuild was started, but it ran out of money.

The westmoreland was my friends grandfathers barge, it was a sad day when that happened.

 

[ROBMH]

Thanks Jan!

I could not bring to mind what it was that the poor “Westmoreland” had her forefoot on. Of course it was one of those concrete pontoons that one used to see everywhere, and which I probably wrongly associated with the “Mulberry Harbours”.

My father used to refer to your father’s book as “The invaluable Jack Coote”. Even now whole sentences and even paragraphs from 1970s and earlier editions come to mind - following the line of the deeper water into the Blackwater in wind over tide, the buoys in the entrance to Walton Channel being carried over the bank they mark on the ebb, finding the Pye End buoy by lining up the house with two gables with the lower lighthouse…

What were those concrete barges?

The concrete lighters were originally used in ww2 as mulberry harbours ,there are a few about in Hoo with the notable exception of a concrete ship which now forms part of Stargate marine to the east of Hoo Marina

 

[ROBMH]

I believe that Berthon in Lymington was the first marina in the UK.

Birdham pool is very old too

 

[Stork_III]

Birdham pool is very old too

"The present Birdham Mill, with its Mill Pond by the harbour, dates from 1768 and when it ceased operating in 1935 was the last tidal mill in Sussex. It operated for three and a half hours before and after high tide. In 1935 the long established Farne family sold their house at Court Barn, the Mill and all its land to Captain H.R.S. Coldicott, who founded Birdham Estates Ltd and enclosed the outer Mill Pool for a harbour for small boats at all stages of the tide(1937). "

Arthur Ransom kept "Lotte Blossum" in the pool in 1950s, for 50p/week!!

 

[Yorkshire Exile]

"The present Birdham Mill, with its Mill Pond by the harbour, dates from 1768 and when it ceased operating in 1935 was the last tidal mill in Sussex. It operated for three and a half hours before and after high tide. In 1935 the long established Farne family sold their house at Court Barn, the Mill and all its land to Captain H.R.S. Coldicott, who founded Birdham Estates Ltd and enclosed the outer Mill Pool for a harbour for small boats at all stages of the tide(1937). "

Arthur Ransom kept "Lotte Blossum" in the pool in 1950s, for 50p/week!!

So they were extortionate even then!