At the moment I am writing some leaflets about the Peninsula, one is based on the wildlife you can find here and the other is based on the history of the Peninsula. They have a mapped route on them with points of interest that you can find here. This has meant I'm doing lots of research including more on Peter Bruff.
I asked the current Harbour Engineer what he knew about Peter Bruff's connections with the area. It turns out he was actually the Harbour Engineer here from 1865 employed by the Harwich Harbour Conservancy Board (HHCB) - now called the Harwich Haven Authority established in 1863 by an Act of Parliament
to safeguard the harbour.
This information ended up answering a question 'why was the jetty on the Point built?'.
Some people have told me it was for mooring boats for passengers to get off, some have said it was for the Aggrigate Yard that used to be here so they could load up their ships and some have said that there used to be a train that ran out to the end of it.
None of these theories have ever been proved to me but one thing we do know is that it does a very fine job of catching sand and shingle brought down the coast by long-shore drift.
Well it turns out that is just what it was designed for!
The deep water channel, followed by shipping coming in and out of the harbour, runs along the Suffolk shoreline. In the 1800's a sand and shingle bar was forming across the harbour much to the consternation by those using the ports of Harwich and Ipswich. This problem was considered significant enough that £50,000 (equivelent to approximately 2 million pounds now) was granted by Parliament in 1844 for a breakwater to be built at Beacon Cliff off Harwich to direct the rivers current towards the Point and for dredging the shoals at the entrance to the harbour. This didn't make a significant enough difference.
What did make a difference was the work of HHCB and Peter Bruff's engineering skills. After studying the tidal currents that cause the lifting and dumping of sand, shingle and river sediment Mr Bruff designed and constructed the curved jetty at the Point. The effect of this design was to destroy the bar that was hindering shipping allowing boats to use the harbour and access up to Ipswich.
16 years later the construction of the Felixstowe docks began, opening in 1886, now the busiest container port in the UK.
The tropical hardwood timber frame stands on huge concrete blocks. On the harbour side the blocks form wide steps covered in a variety of seaweeds including the only kelp in the whole of Suffolk. The nooks and crannies are home to sea anemones, starfish, muscles and limpets. The surfaces of the blocks are covered in limpets and barnacles. A rich wildlife habitat.
