Jutting out along the west bank of Gravesend is two piers, one thriving, the other a desolate wreck.

However if you’d have visited the town 70 years earlier, things would have looked much different.

The abandoned structure that stretches out against the murky Thames today is all that remains of Gravesend West railway station.

When it was built in 1886, the station was a pinnacle of Victorian engineering and was used to by boat trains to take passengers to coastal resorts in the area.

The glory days

The pier has lay derelict for years

Though it would be hard to imagine it today, Gravesend West Railway station used to be a phenomenally impressive structure.

The concourse was laid out in a gigantic V shaped structure with a selection of Gothic station buildings erected in the middle of it.

The bulk of the station’s passengers would come from London via passenger boats that would dock at the end.

From there, passengers would catch either a rail or boat connection to other parts of the county any beyond.

SS Princess Alice

An artist's impression of the collision

The most famous ship to dock at the pier is remembered for all the wrong reasons.

On September 3, 1878, the passenger paddle steamer SS Princess Alice was making her way from London down to Sheerness when she struck the collier Bywell Castle.

Damage to the ship was catastrophic and she split in two, sinking within four minutes.

The crew of the Castle did what they could to save the stricken souls on board, rescuing 130 from the water, many of whom died subsequently from ingesting the water.

It is thought that between 600 to 700 passengers died that day, making it the deadliest British inland waterway shipping accident on record.

A forgotten monument

There are encouraging signs the pier could be redeveloped again

For many of Kent’s maritime monuments, the latter stages of the 20 th century proved a difficult time and it proved the same for Gravesend’s mighty pier.

In 1953, following a steady decline in passengers the station closed to passengers.

15 years later the last shipment of freight was docked there and the pier fell into disarray.

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Many of the surrounding buildings were renovated or torn down and Gravesend town centre as we know it today began to grow up around it.

Now all that remains of this once great station is the pier that juts out into the Thames, boarded off and waiting for a new lease of life.