Monument record TQ 77 NW 1233 - Site of Cliffe Creek Coastguard station and cottages.

This feature is recorded in the English Heritage Historic Area Assessment for Cliffe. The report states:
"'Free trade' as those involved termed it, was still endemic in the 19th century and early on a watch vessel named Swallow occupying a site near the mouth of Cliffe Creek was used as a coastguard station. It was replaced in the Edwardian era by terrace of coastguard cottages which survived until c 1996. (1)

The foundations of Cliffe Creek Coastguard Station were observed during a field visit to Cliffe Marshes undertaken on 20 October 2011 by English Heritage's Archaeological Survey and Investigation (Cambridge) team as part of the Hoo Peninsula Historic Landscape Project. The coastguard station was built at some point between 1897 and 1908 on War Department land purchased for the construction of the nearby coastal gun battery at Hope Point. (2-3). The station consisted of a brick-built terrace of seven cottages with a projecting bay at each end and what appears to be the coastguard station itself to the north. (4) The surviving remains consist of the concrete floor slabs of the main structure and a number of outbuildings as well as footings of brick walls and tiled floor surfaces. (5)

<1> Historic england, 2014, Hoo Peninsula Outline Historic Area Assessment: Cliffe and Cliffe Woods Parish. Research Report 2014-54 (Bibliographic reference). SKE31591.

<2> Ordnance Survey, 1897, Kent 1:2500 1897 (Map). SKE58577.

<3> Ordnance Survey, 1908, Ordnance Survey Kent 1:2500 1908 (Map). SKE55927.

<4> Cherry A, 1991, Cliffe In Old Photographs (Bibliographic reference). SKE59230.

<5> Sarah Newsome / Rebecca Pullen, 2011, Field Investigators Comments (Miscellaneous Material). SKE59231.