Hoo Peninsula

The Hoo Peninsula lies in Kent where the Thames and Medway rivers meet. A ridge of chalk, clay and sand hills runs through it, with flat marshland spreading below. The name comes from the Old English word for a spur of land or the heel-like shape of the ridge. The Domesday Book of 1086 already recorded the area. Today it holds protected wildlife sites alongside industrial works and energy plants. Archaeologists have found Bronze Age tools and Jutish burial grounds on the peninsula. Roman pottery appears at Cooling, and the Romans built early sea walls to drain the marshes for sheep pasture. The Hundred of Hoo was an Anglo-Saxon land division covering villages such as Hoo, High Halstow and Allhallows. During the First World War an explosives factory operated here. The landscape still shows traces of these past uses. Visitors walk the Northward Hill National Nature Reserve where herons nest in woodland. The reserve covers grazing marsh, saltings and lagoons rich in birds. Along the ridge runs the old Thames and Medway Canal, now silted, with its two-mile tunnel at Higham. The A228 and B2000 roads cross the higher ground, passing 17th-century farmhouses and medieval timber-framed buildings. The peninsula’s quiet lanes lead to sea walls and distant views over the estuaries.