Thames Tributaries Ingrebourne - Rainham

Thames Tributaries Ingrebourne The Ingrebourne continues to flow north west and becomes known as Rainham Creek.

Post to the west Rainham Marsh
Post to the north South Hornchurch


Bridge Road
The area was once known as Flood Row because it was, obviously, frequently flooded.
Tesco built in 1990.
Foreshore deposits were found here from an old stream. There had been wattle fences here and pits with fire-cracked pebbles in them from the Bronze Age. There were also Iron Age rubbish pits containing pottery and animal bones.
Red Bridge over the Ingrebourne

Broadway
12 18th century, with a timber beam over the shop-front
17-11 Rainham Library. The county library moved here in 1967. Local history collection. The building was put up by Stanton Radio in 1964 and then converted. Previously it was the site of cottages.
21 Rainham Family Centre.
17–21
early 18th cottages here were demolished in 1960.Weather boarded cottages were demolished in 1944. Called Cheesebutte Alley they were sited on the driveway between which now lies between the library and the family centre.
22 Vicarage. This was in origin a three-roomed house which was used as the vicarage from 1701. It was encased in brick and rear stairs put in in 1710. There is a weather boarded extension
29 Redberry House, 18th house associated with the wharf and commercial area behind it. It has an exterior of 1800 and a ground floor room used as a counting-house. The front door has steps, a circular cast-iron knocker, lion's-head blocks, a fanlight and a hood. There are Insurance marks – 2 Sun, 1 Phoenix and 1 Royal Exchange. A rear oriel window looks out over a yard with 19th coach house and stables.
Redberry Wharf. 19th wharf associated with Redberry House
31 The New Angel Inn. 18th and rebuilt 1906. It is now roughcast above brick, replacing a one storey inn
32 Bell. The original pub of 1718 belonged to St.Giles in the Fields' charities. A more ambitious pub was built in1900, with a half-timbered gable
Telephone box Type K6 Designed in 1935 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. This is outside The Bell
Broadway cars. Former toll house described as’ Vicarage Annexe’ and listed.
The Phoenix Pub may have been the first local inn established as the result of petitions in 1633 and called the White Hart. By 1716 it was called the Phoenix and was rebuilt in the 1730s and in 1791 built. It was at that time used as a post house and it became a telegraph office in the 1870s. It burned down in 1891 and was rebuilt again with a brick front. The National Telephone Company had a call office there in 1902; it was later at a draper's but had gone by 1910.
Railway cottages, gone
Rainham Hall built in 1729 for Captain John Harle, the owner of 'Rayneham Wharfe', a merchant and shipowner. He came from an old Northumberland family and after a career at sea, he married Mary Tibbinton, a widow with property, in 1718 at the age of thirty. He then up a business at Rainham, dredging the Ingrebourne so barges could reach the road. He dealt in Portland marble and stone, iron, clinker, pantiles, Delft tiles but mainly in coal from Newcastle, and wood from Scotland and Scandinavia. The Hall was built to high standard in a Dutch style. It is built of patterned brick and set back from the road behind gates. The interior was restored in 1920, and in the 1960s retaining throughout the original softwood panelling, door cases and fireplaces. In the reception room is a coat of arms copied from Harle's tombstone– including shoveller ducks for his connection with the coal trade. Carvings on lintels relate to sea career. There is a Victorian dumb waiter and a staircase of Baltic oak and mahogany balusters. There are Dutch tiles and wall panels in the basement still room. There are the remains of a 19th gas lighting system, In the 1760s John Harle's son was horsewhipped here for associating with Methodists and as he died without children the house passed to female relatives. In the Sturges family passed it to the Treasury in lieu of death duties and it was transferred to the National Trust. There are stories about tunnels for smuggling. There are also early 18th Brick and stone garden walls plus wrought iron railings and gates with a monogram of ‘H.J.M’. Intertwined for John Harle and his wife Mary. It has been conjectured that the gates are by Tijou. There are also decorative Stone vases.
Lodge. A small 18th century house brick which was built before the main Hall. It might have been John Harle's first house here but more likely his business office and counting house. It is panelled throughout in softwood.
Coach house, a large plain building of stock brick with two round headed coach arches.
Stable yard. This is divided from the garden by ornamental ironwork. It is 18th in stock brick with round headed coach arches of red rubbed brick
Gardens. Not as they were originally, and they have been allowed to become wild. They consist of three acres enclosed by walls. There was once a Dutch formal garden behind the Hall and there are traces of herringbone stone paths and ornamental stonework. There is a wooded area with fruit and nut trees, including a mulberry. There is a huge Victorian dog house.
St.Helen and St.Giles. A late Norman church with a tower, rare for Essex. It was built in 1178 by Richard Justiaar de Lucy who married a daughter of Henry II and was connected with Lesnes Abbey across the river and the church went to them after his death. It was ‘restored’ by the Rev. Ernest Geldart in 1910. There are still Norman windows and door with an original hinge. Walls are Essex septaria and flint rubble. The tower is short with an upper part of 16th brick work. On the stairs is a 1500 carving of a ketch at anchor. There is a 16th iron-banded oak chest. There are brasses and carvings of the 4 evangelists by an Oberammergau actor.
Wesleyan chapel was built in 1834 opposite Station Approach. Local hostility led to closure, in 1848 and it was taken over by the Brentwood Primitive Methodist mission. It was converted into 2 cottages which were demolished in. 1939. They were known as Wesley Cottages Cowper Road Laid out in the 1880s with working class housing
The first Catholic Church in the area was an iron mission room built here in the 1900s.

Dover’s Corner
Our Lady of La Salette Roman Catholic church built 1966-7 by John Newton of Buries, Newton & Partners. From 1939 a brick barn which had belonged to Dovers Farm was the church until the permanent building, was opened
Parish Hall by W.C. Mangan, 1939, converted from a barn.
Presbytry for La Salette Church is in what was Little Dovers farmhouse.
Automatic telephone exchange opened here in 1967

Ferry Lane
Rainham Station. 1854. Between main line destinations and Dagenham Dock on C2C. 1934 Rebuilt, otherwise the same as it was in the 1850s when it was opened by LTSR. In 1891 the whole station was burnt down including the booking office and waiting rooms. Rebuilt in wood.

Melville Road
Laid out in the 1880s with working class housing New Road The original section of what became the A13 between Dagenham and Rainham dates from c.1810 and was dualled around 1928. East of Rainham the road dates from the 1920s

Rainham
Rainham is mentioned in the Domesday Book and the name could mean 'homestead or village of a man called Regna' or ‘settlement of the ruling people' Saxon Burial ground. On the area called Bread Field which relates to the year 1294 and refers to a pre-Reformation endowment providing the Holy Loaf

Rainham Road
Albion Pub before 1920 this was known as the Canteen or the City of London Rifles Canteen. It stands on the site of Great Dovers Manor House.This was a moated manor site named for landowner Phillipe de Dover, who came from there.

Upminster Road
Once known as Back Lane
2–6 are on the site of the old Bell tavern, which was there in 1702 In By 1733 it was called ‘the Horseshoe and Can’, and by 1769 the ‘Lamb (and Crown). It closed in 1789.
Sports Ground

Upminster Road South
2-8, an irregular group of timber-framed cottages from 17th some with shop fronts. Post office in this road by 1839 and remained here until 1907.
War Memorial Clock Tower. This stands on what was the village green. It is a hexagonal tower, in red brick by Mr Vinton, builder. It cost £60 and was unveiled in 1920 by Sir Francis Whitmore, Lord Lieutenant of Essex. It has the names of war dead and 'Lest We Forget' written at angles and surrounded by iron railings.
Smithy
1 Ship. Cafe and church centre
Bright’s Farmhouse. This stood by a pond and there is still a curve in the road which was originally to avoid this.
58 Cauliflower Inn. Rebuilt in 1907. Originally a cottage based beer house in 1878 set up by a local farmer whose grew the vegetable.
St Helen’s Court – built on what was a field Hollies. Victorian Suburban style housing
Primary School, Gabled wings 1872 with bellcote, and tripartite window. Enlarged 1926. This originated in a bequest of £50 by a vicar of Rainham who died in 1779, for teaching children to read. A day-school was opened before 1785, in a site on Gravel Pit field.

Wennington Road
Rainham Methodist Church

Comments

Anonymous said…
The alley on the library site was called Charlottes Alley (not cheesebutt).
The wooden railway station was demolished and replaced in 1961.

Please don't take these comments as criticism, I really enjoy this site.
Anonymous said…
Comments approved
Anonymous said…
Can anybody clarify that there were public toilets between the bell and the cottage's that were knocked down to create tesco
Anonymous said…
Dose anyone know about Rainham Fire Station it stood near the traffic lights a

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