Like you, I read Dracula only relatively recently; before that, I'd only ever seen the films. As I am now writing my own 'inversion' of the story, set in the present day, I have been keen to track down the Purfleet locations.
I do agree with a lot of the suggestions: that Stoker used the LOCATION of Purfleet house, the chapel, the walls and the road, all of which seem to work quite well. What doesn't quite 'click' are the descriptions of the Carfax/Purfleet House as a building. I haven't seen any picture of Purfleet House apart from the one you reproduce, but it doesn't look anything like Stoker's Carfax with its central stone 'keep' and antiquity (partly mediaeval). "The house has been added to, but in a very straggling way, and I can only guess at the amount of ground it covers, which must be very great," Stoker writes. Farther east, beyond High House, there was another old mansion called Stone House, but I haven't seen any pictures of it, so I don't know if that might have been closer to his description of Carfax House. But in reality, it could have come from Yorkshire or Devon or even Stoker's Irish homeland..
Stoker also writes: "It is surrounded by a high wall of ancient structure, built of heavy stones." But real-life Purfleet is not stone country, and the surviving ordnance depot walls - which are about 11ft high - are, as you'd expect built of brick. Some much smaller walls of knapped flints (hardly "heavy stones") can be found round the former Whitbread Estate. However, there is a fragment of a wall with large stone blocks (either removed from a demolished older building or brought in as ship's ballast perhaps?) at the junction of Church Lane and Church Hollow. Maybe Stoker had this in mind.
I'm guessing that Stoker did that novelist's trick of taking a house from one location and putting it in a completely different place. Stoker's friend Arthur Conan Doyle did it in my home village of Stoke D'Abernon (aka 'Stoke Moran') for 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band', where the manor house is in the right place but it's not the building that was actually there. ''Dracula' is fiction, after all!
One final thought: before St Stephen's opened in 1923, the church for Purfleet was St Clement's, which still exists next to the margarine factory in Grays! It's open only occasionally, it seems, which has been its fate for many years. In the 1870s it was "cold and damp and dreary [with a] look of dilapidation". And by the 1890s, when/if Stoker made his visits to the area, "the church was closed for some years and services were apparently not resumed until J W Hayes became vicar in 1902". It was Hayes who later (1920) bought the chapel, Purfleet House and adjoining land and built St Stephen's Church. (All that from british-history.ac/vch/essex/vol8/pp57-74.) So did Stoker have a look round the semi-derelict, damp, dusty St Clement's down the road, adding its "musty" interior to the Purfleet chapel's location?
By the way, that poor old chapel in its brambly wasteland may be getting a new lease of life. The land has been bought by a developer who has promised to repair the Grade II listed structure and turn it into a house, one of six on that land (the others being newbuilds, of course). So perhaps Dracula's chapel will awake from its long slumber. Undead, indeed! I wonder if the new owner will call it Carfax Cottage...
Hi Stephen, I suspect you’re right that the Carfax House in the book does include inspiration from mutliple places Stoker would have known, with a bit of artistic licence thrown in, too. Have you visited the other St Clements in West Thurrock? It’s a strange little place, overshadowed as it is by the industrial buildings that have grown up around it. Good luck with your writing and research!
Thanks, Amy. I think we're talking about the same St Clements, ie the old one in St Clements Rd RM20 4AL, near the river and next to the Procter & Gamble factory. I hadn't realised there's a modern St Clement's on London Road as well! I shall certainly have to visit the old church and explore the whole area more extensively, as I'd like to record some of the industrial structures too. Grays, Thurrock and Purfleet are changing rapidly and all the old industrial remnants will be swept away soon enough, I dare say.
BTW, the 1897 25in OS map (the one you helpfully used) shows Stone House to have been a very small affair, so we can discount that as a contender. Purfleet House was not especially large either - not as impressive as High House to the east. Between the hotel and No 5 Magazine there was a military hospital, and I wonder if that gave Stoker the idea for placing the lunatic asylum in Purfleet.
Ah, I thought we might be talking about the same church, but wasn't 100% given the other one. I'm sad to hear your suggestion that it might be turned into a house and others built on the same land. I understood P&G had committed to preserving it. It'll be a shame if that's not the case.
Better than the alternative, which was complete demolition, I understand. The interior had been gutted and it had been completely remodelled when it was converted from a church to a dwelling the first time around c1920. It's remarkable the chapel has survived at all.
Anyway, the building will live on, in picturesquely derelict form with some sinister overtones, in my novel, Daciana's Revenge (everything has to be a bit sinister in the gothic!). I wouldn't mind living there myself: it's between a chalk cliff and the river, so what's not to like?
Hi Amy
Like you, I read Dracula only relatively recently; before that, I'd only ever seen the films. As I am now writing my own 'inversion' of the story, set in the present day, I have been keen to track down the Purfleet locations.
I do agree with a lot of the suggestions: that Stoker used the LOCATION of Purfleet house, the chapel, the walls and the road, all of which seem to work quite well. What doesn't quite 'click' are the descriptions of the Carfax/Purfleet House as a building. I haven't seen any picture of Purfleet House apart from the one you reproduce, but it doesn't look anything like Stoker's Carfax with its central stone 'keep' and antiquity (partly mediaeval). "The house has been added to, but in a very straggling way, and I can only guess at the amount of ground it covers, which must be very great," Stoker writes. Farther east, beyond High House, there was another old mansion called Stone House, but I haven't seen any pictures of it, so I don't know if that might have been closer to his description of Carfax House. But in reality, it could have come from Yorkshire or Devon or even Stoker's Irish homeland..
Stoker also writes: "It is surrounded by a high wall of ancient structure, built of heavy stones." But real-life Purfleet is not stone country, and the surviving ordnance depot walls - which are about 11ft high - are, as you'd expect built of brick. Some much smaller walls of knapped flints (hardly "heavy stones") can be found round the former Whitbread Estate. However, there is a fragment of a wall with large stone blocks (either removed from a demolished older building or brought in as ship's ballast perhaps?) at the junction of Church Lane and Church Hollow. Maybe Stoker had this in mind.
I'm guessing that Stoker did that novelist's trick of taking a house from one location and putting it in a completely different place. Stoker's friend Arthur Conan Doyle did it in my home village of Stoke D'Abernon (aka 'Stoke Moran') for 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band', where the manor house is in the right place but it's not the building that was actually there. ''Dracula' is fiction, after all!
One final thought: before St Stephen's opened in 1923, the church for Purfleet was St Clement's, which still exists next to the margarine factory in Grays! It's open only occasionally, it seems, which has been its fate for many years. In the 1870s it was "cold and damp and dreary [with a] look of dilapidation". And by the 1890s, when/if Stoker made his visits to the area, "the church was closed for some years and services were apparently not resumed until J W Hayes became vicar in 1902". It was Hayes who later (1920) bought the chapel, Purfleet House and adjoining land and built St Stephen's Church. (All that from british-history.ac/vch/essex/vol8/pp57-74.) So did Stoker have a look round the semi-derelict, damp, dusty St Clement's down the road, adding its "musty" interior to the Purfleet chapel's location?
By the way, that poor old chapel in its brambly wasteland may be getting a new lease of life. The land has been bought by a developer who has promised to repair the Grade II listed structure and turn it into a house, one of six on that land (the others being newbuilds, of course). So perhaps Dracula's chapel will awake from its long slumber. Undead, indeed! I wonder if the new owner will call it Carfax Cottage...
Hi Stephen, I suspect you’re right that the Carfax House in the book does include inspiration from mutliple places Stoker would have known, with a bit of artistic licence thrown in, too. Have you visited the other St Clements in West Thurrock? It’s a strange little place, overshadowed as it is by the industrial buildings that have grown up around it. Good luck with your writing and research!
Thanks, Amy. I think we're talking about the same St Clements, ie the old one in St Clements Rd RM20 4AL, near the river and next to the Procter & Gamble factory. I hadn't realised there's a modern St Clement's on London Road as well! I shall certainly have to visit the old church and explore the whole area more extensively, as I'd like to record some of the industrial structures too. Grays, Thurrock and Purfleet are changing rapidly and all the old industrial remnants will be swept away soon enough, I dare say.
BTW, the 1897 25in OS map (the one you helpfully used) shows Stone House to have been a very small affair, so we can discount that as a contender. Purfleet House was not especially large either - not as impressive as High House to the east. Between the hotel and No 5 Magazine there was a military hospital, and I wonder if that gave Stoker the idea for placing the lunatic asylum in Purfleet.
Ah, I thought we might be talking about the same church, but wasn't 100% given the other one. I'm sad to hear your suggestion that it might be turned into a house and others built on the same land. I understood P&G had committed to preserving it. It'll be a shame if that's not the case.
Better than the alternative, which was complete demolition, I understand. The interior had been gutted and it had been completely remodelled when it was converted from a church to a dwelling the first time around c1920. It's remarkable the chapel has survived at all.
Anyway, the building will live on, in picturesquely derelict form with some sinister overtones, in my novel, Daciana's Revenge (everything has to be a bit sinister in the gothic!). I wouldn't mind living there myself: it's between a chalk cliff and the river, so what's not to like?