I drove down to Herongate to match and potentially pick up some floor bricks for the yard - I'm about 100 short. They matched OK, but they didn't carry stock at the showroom, a bit frustrating, but then I should have checked.
I went down through Warley. It has always struck me that it has that feel of something that makes one think of paintings and etchings of London's peripheral villages in the Georgian period, the way the road falls quite steeply from the Essex Weald down into the flat Thames Valley above Tilbury, past Georgian merchant's houses and old coaching inns, and their white weatherboarded outbuildings. You get the same feel in places like Hampstead.
Disillusionment and contemporary reality soon set in when you hit the A127 'Sarfend Arterial', which runs along the foot of the escarpment. I had to drive along it for a couple of miles to East Horndon and exit at the Halfway House. The pub was built by my great grandfather in the 1920s to cater to the 'charabang' crowds coming out from East London for daytrips to Southend, and to his own irrepressible thirst as he was driven from The Elephant in Fenchurch St to The Royal Hotel in Southend (hence the name). I don't think I'd ever been inside before, despite my father having held the licence for some years, so stopped and popped in. Old fashioned, not as shabby as I had expected, with faux half-timbered ceilings, it smelled of old varnish, which took me back to childhood pub visits with dad.
Afterwards I walked up the lane to the church to see my great-grandparents' grave. The lane is filthy, rubbish strewn, with pathways beaten back through the undergrowth. I didn't care to look. There were several cars and vans parked, despite the worn double-yellow lines, each with a single man inside. One of them pulled out behind me, and kept pulling in again, shadowing me till I reached the track up to the church. I was glad I had the dog with me.
All Saints was as lovely as I remembered it, ancient, dark soft red bricks, crooked-roofed, but the graveyard was much more overgrown. I couldn't even reach the grave, so I walked around the church to where a man was clearing the undergrowth. He told me that he was slowly clearing the graveyard, helped by a willing army of volunteers on odd Saturdays. There is a Facebook group. Another man appeared, a press photographer who had covered some news relating to the church, and fallen in love with it, becoming the treasurer. In January the building had been broken into, the electricity supply tapped and a rave had taken place. It was broken up by the police and the organisers had fled, leaving all their equipment. The damage was surprisingly light, but heavy snow machines had been installed up in the galleries, which entailed a survey. An appeal quickly raised £20,000, and the fabric was repaired, with funds to spare.
I asked about the cars and the men. 'Doggers', he laughed. 'Even during daylight?' I asked. He told me that it was one of the prime 'dogging' locations. And there was me, with a dog, no less! The police had driven through twice today already, but they quickly reassemble. They are going to install CCTV with some of the funds.
He told me that he is digitally mapping the graveyard, creating a 3D digital database of the graves. When it's done you will be able to 'virtually' walk around the graves, even clean them to be able to read the inscriptions on the headstones. He showed me an example on his phone. It was indistinguishable from a high-res photograph, but in 3D, remarkable.
I left, promising to join the fb group and help with the clearing. I walked past a lone war grave, immaculate white Portland stone. 9th November 1918, two days before the Armistice.
'Don't flash your lights as you drive up the lane!' he called after me, laughing.