Wat Tyler Country Park

 park  Add category

 Upload a photo

Located on the Thames Estuary Marshes, the area that is now the Park was once part of the Pitsea Hall Estate and as valuable grazing land it was then farmed until the late 1800's.
In 1895 the land was purchased by the British Explosives Syndicate and was used for the manufacture and storage of explosives.
In 1920 the Nobel Explosives Company took over the site and whilst few of the original buildings remain, the protective blast barriers, in the form of large excavations or banks of earth, can still be found scattered throughout the Park.
In 1928 the War Department purchased the land and used it as a sea Transport Depot. More buildings were added during the Second World War, including a number of pill boxes. The site was then used for various industrial purposes until Basildon District Council developed it as a country park in the early 1980's.
The Park covers an area of 125 acres and contains a variety of habitats including hawthorn scrub, wildflower meadows, grassland, reedbeds, ponds, tidal creeks and saltmarsh. These are all rich in plant and animal life which includes a number of locally and nationally rare species. It is for that reason that the Park has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a national designation for important wildlife sites and commonly referred to as S.S.S.I.
Contains National Motorboat Museum