If you had walked down Shoregate Lane towards the river during the first half of the twentieth century you would have seen a row of wooden chalet style dwellings situated on the right hand side almost opposite the cottage and nursery on the left. These were known locally as ‘The Muddies Huts’.
The dwellings are believed to have been constructed by a local barge company as rented accommodation for their employees towards the end of the nineteenth century. During that period barges were a common sight transporting goods such as agricultural products and bricks along the river. Shoregate and Twinney Creeks were locations where barges came to load or unload goods.
Joyce Bass from Drakes Close remembers visiting her aunt Maud Seamer at one of the dwellings during the 1940s. She says, “There were four wooden houses painted black. Each had a sloping roof, a chimney, two rooms comprising a bedroom and a kitchen and an outside toilet at the bottom of a long garden. An open fire and a kitchen boiler were used to heat the properties.”
Initially, the residents had river related jobs such as bargemen and clay diggers but as time passed farm workers and others lived there. The national census for 1901 shows that the dwellings were occupied by John Seamer, a manual worker and his granddaughter Elsie, George Seamer, a brickmaker, his wife Mary, their daughter Maud, a farm worker and sons Fred, Arthur and Edward. Maria Baker and her son Jonathan and Mary Houghting and her daughter Lilian lived in the other two dwellings.
During the war some residents left home to fight in the conflict. William Seamer served as a civilian stoker on a tug named ‘Desire’. Previously he had worked as a clay digger on the river. He perished in the war along with his son Edward who served as a stoker on HMS Turbulent and had worked as a bargeman before the war. His other son Albert who served as a stoker in the Royal Navy survived along with brothers Arthur and Fred Seamer who also served in the Royal Navy. Albert’s brother Charles who had joined the army in 1909 had an arm amputated after getting wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans on the Western Front. George and Edward Seager remained as residents at the dwellings during the war and were employed as manual workers in the Ham Green area.
During the 1920s Maud Seamer and her mother Mary, Sarah and Charles Crane, Arthur Seamer, Alf Tassell and Fred Anderson resided on the site, followed by Albert Seager, Arthur and Daisy Sharp and Ebenezer and Lilian Webb.
Joyce Bass from Drakes Close recalls the residents who lived in the dwellings during the 1940s.
“Ebenezer Webb and his wife lived in the first house and Maud Seamer lived in the second. She worked for farmer Alf Clark as a tractor driver and she dressed in male working clothes with a jacket and baggy trousers. Mr Plumb lived in the third house along and Frank Woollett, a former pub landlord from Eastchurch lived in the fourth house.”
The Seamer family were the longest resident family at the properties. Maud Seamer resided in Shoregate Lane for her entire life while Ebenezer Webb and his wife lived there from the 1930s until the early 1950s.
‘The Muddies Huts’ were eventually demolished during the early 1950s and the site incorporated into surrounding farmland belonging to A Hinge & Sons, The wooden dwellings are long gone but descendants of the Seamer family continue to reside in the village.
About David
David Wood was born, raised and still lives in Upchurch today. He is able to write from personal experience about village life and the changes that have taken place over the years, making ‘Memories of Upchurch’ a very readable book and detailed historical study of the village.
David's book, ‘Memories of Upchurch’ is available direct from David at: david3702001@yahoo.co.uk or from us here at Upchurch Matters.
Price £12 + £3.50 postage and packing.
David Wood
