2-888-201 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ruins of the Great Fire at Gravesend - looking West, 1850. 'The High-street...from the Town-hall downwards, to within a short distance of the Town Pier, was at four o'clock completely enveloped in flames, which, when they involved the premises of Mr. Troughton, tallow-chandler, and an oil-shop...contiguous to it, formed an awful conflagration...all hope of preserving a single house between the Town-hall and the pier was abandoned...notwithstanding that the Hartford and Rochester engines had arrived, and a prodigious volume of water was discharged on the whole line of burning houses on both sides of the street. There was, fortunately, sufficient time to save the cash-boxes...of the County and Savings Banks, which were taken to the Customhouse, all the officers of which were actively engaged, with the townspeople, in working the engines'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.