Notes: Purfleet became the Ordnance Board's centre of gunpowder storage as a result of an Act of Parliament passed in 1760, surpassing in size both the Tower of London and Upnor Castle on the Medway. It stored powder, transported after 1787 from the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey, and supplied both the Army and the Navy being exceptionally busy during the Napoleonic wars, and comprised a group of five magazines built in 1763-5 by James Gabriel Montresor of the Royal Engineers for the Board of Ordnance. Each magazine could hold 10,400 barrels of gunpowder which increased to 10,800 barrels in times of emergency. The magazines were protected by outer and inner sanctum walls. The work within the magazines was undertaken by civilians. The depot also included barracks for officers and men, a proof house for the testing of powder and a clock tower over the entrance archway to the compound, attached to the boundary wall.

A railway between London and Southend was authorised in 1852 and the first section was opened in 1854 by the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Company, which was a joint venture between the London and Blackwall Railway and the Eastern Counties Railway companies. The route was extended in phases and partnerships were formed with the Midland Railway and District Railway to provide through-services. The main line ran from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness via Basildon. A loop line between Barking and Pitsea provided an alternative route via Purfleet Grays and Tilbury, with a short branch line connecting the two via Ockendon. Purfleet station opened 13 April 1854.

North of Purfleet, the line crossed Tank Hill Road on a level crossing. A signal box was provided on the north side of the crossing on the up side. The box was built by the Railway Signal Company and contained an RSC frame of forty levers, eleven of which were spare when the box opened. In the early sixties, when the line was electrified, colour-light signalling was installed. The new signals were controlled from a panel mounted above the levers, and the number of levers was reduced to just ten to work the remaining layout. The box closed in 1980, and the control of the level crossing was transferred to Purfleet box, monitored by closed-circuit television cameras. North of the signal box on the down side there was a single siding listed in the Railway Clearing House Handbook of Stations for 1904 as Purfleet Siding (Ordnance Crossing Siding). A footbridge was provided at the crossing.

Purfleet Rifle Range was created by the war department in 1906 on the Rainham and Wennington Marshes. An untimetabled halt named Purfleet Rifle Range opened in 1911 to serve the range. It was located on the west side of Tank Hill Road level crossing. This station layout was dictated by the access point into the rifle range, including a standard gauge spur and the location of the level crossing which required the platforms to be staggered. The up platform was located between the crossing and the spur and the down platform was substantially staggered to the north. The up side was an island with a bay platform. A wide footbridge spanned the station at the north end of the up platform. It had three stairways, one to each platform with the third giving access to the rifle range. A building stood at the bottom of these steps.

Purfleet Rifle Range first appeared in public timetables in October 1921. Some debate exists regarding whether it was a halt or a station. Tickets were issued from Purfleet Rifle Range and given that trains serving it were suburban in nature, ie of non corridor stock, tickets must have been issued from an office on site and probably located in the building at the bottom of the steps. Three of the tickets illustrated here show 'halt' the later two don’t. There was a substantial shelter with a canopy around four sides on the island platform and in later years LMS Hawkseye signs on both platforms. The fact tickets were issued on location technically makes Purfleet Rifle Range a station rather than a halt but nevertheless surviving, cast iron War Department signs, of which at least two survive, bear the title PURFLEET RIFLERANGE HALT.

A contemporary report describes the arrival of a troop train during the early years of WW1 "September 1914 and a train arrived at the station known as ‘Purfleet Rifle Ranges’ bearing 1,000 volunteers of Kitchener’s New Army. 300 of them were from Norfolk and had enlisted in the East Surreys. The 18th Division history records - There were not enough blankets to go round; the food was course, there were no recreation huts, no dining halls, no canteens such as the regular recruit found in barrack life. But the men’s mood was to make the best of things."

The station closed on 31 May 1948 but a siding running behind the east end of the down platform remained in use. The Railway Clearing House Handbook of Stations for 1956 list a War Department siding. A 1952 picture reproduced below shows coal being unloaded in the siding.

At the north end of the station on the up side a standard gauge spur curved to the south under the footbridge and into the rifle range. There was a run round loop shortly after it left the main line. The single track spur ran to a cordite store. Cordite was an important development in the late 19th century revolutionising military propellants and warfare. The cordite store was constructed in 1909 and played an important role during the First World War. The location of the store on the bank of the River Thames and its railway connections meant the cordite could be easily transported to meet wartime demands. The store consisted of substantial earth embankments surrounding a yellow brick building with a pitched roof. The embankments would have provided protection from blast if the building had blown up. Short tunnels through the embankment gave access to the building. The building was camouflaged by netting during war time which was anchored by large concrete blocks at the foot of earth bank.

A narrow gauge line left the cordite store in an east north east direction and then immediately curved southwards towards the gunpowder magazines, this area today being occupied by River Court and the museum, before terminating on a jetty in the Thames.  A spur from near the jetty served a riverside quay wait a travelling crane. On its route, the narrow gauge line twice crossed the meandering Mar Dyke; once near the transfer shed and again on the approach to the jetty. Whilst the narrow gauge system is shown on some maps and can also be traced on old aerial photographs, no details of its operation, including locomotives and rolling stock, had come to light at the time of writing. The Thames jetty on which the narrow gauge line ended is also curious for, at its outer end, it turned sharply through 90 degrees to end at a landing stage. The narrow gauge line negotiated this 90 degree turn but whether locomotives ran onto the landing stage is unclear. As previously, the line onto the jetty is clearly marked on certain maps but apparently open air whereas aerial photographs so some form of shed, or at least a roof, on the landing stage.

Prior to WW2 eight anti-aircraft ammunition magazines (EAM - Equipment Ammunition Magazine) were constructed immediately south-west of the cordite store. These were served by a spur from the narrow gauge line. EAM Purfleet served anti-aircraft guns in the Themes/Medway (North) area.

The five 18th century gunpowder magazines remained in use throughout the 19th and 20th century until 1962, when the land was purchased from the M.O.D by Thurrock Council. Four of the five magazines were demolished in the late 1960s to make way for housing, while No.5 was used as a storage facility by the council and, since 1994, has housed Purfleet Heritage and Military Centre. The centre is open Thursdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays. The building is listed as a Scheduled Ancient Monument Grade 1. The rifle range remained in use into the 1990s. The land was sold to the RSPB in 2000. A survey of the surviving military features on the site was made by Oxford Archaeology. This was undertaken as an archaeological condition of planning approval granted to RSPB prior to scheduled works at the site. A number of surviving features have been retained within the reserve. 7 of the WW2 ammunition magazines (EAM) were demolished shortly after the RSPB acquired the site in 2000. A visitor centre was built in 2006.

Tickets from Michael Stewart