Harold Hill's 50th Anniversary

by Simon Donoghue

On November 25th 1948, the first of the permanent houses on the London County Council's largest post-war housing estate, Harold Hill, was handed over at a special ceremony to the Rutherfords of Dagenham. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of this event. Havering Libraries, with Don Tait - who has established a large personal archive relating to the history of Harold Hill and Noak Hill, mounted an exhibition at Harold Hill Library which explored the history of this north eastern comer of Romford.

The exhibition was officially opened by Mrs Reta Coffin MBE, the first female mayor of Havering and, with her husband Frank, one of the cornerstones of the fledgling estate's political life since the late fifties, on November 25th 1998 The exhibition successfully transferred to the Central Reference Library then to Homchurch Library.

There is a massive interest in local history and it is important to note the contribution that the Borough's library service has played in the preservation and promotion of the wealth of material available. This Harold Hill Exhibition added to other recent displays on the history of Elm Park and the 750th anniversary of Romford Market. George Saddington, the Chief Librarian, allowed me time to work on this project with Don, as well as providing invaluable advice and practical assistance. My colleagues at Harold Hill Library, the Central Reference Library and the Libraries Administration all contributed in different ways to the success of the final product. It should also be noted that the only narrative history of Harold Hill was written by another former Harold Hill librarian. Brian Lingham's History of Harold Hill and Noak Hill has, for thirty years, contributed to the understanding of this area among schoolchildren and serious historians alike.

Support for the exhibition came from many directions. The Essex Record Office and London Metropolitan Archive both allowed the use of maps and photographs from their collections. Gordon Little and Phil Baldock assisted with the reproduction of photographs and slides, whilst Chris Saltmarsh and Norma Jennings allowed us to use pictures from their book Havering Village to Harold Wood. The Romford Recorder and Harold Gazette both supported the project with features throughout 1998. Mr. E. Herbert - 'Herbie' - put his own research at our disposal and speculative letters produced some wonderful results. Eileen Gordon, MP for Romford, producing a photograph of herself in Harold Hill Library shortly after it opened, with the first branch librarian Roy Smith in attendance, being a particular surprise.

What really brought the history to life for Don and myself during eighteen months of research and writing, was the fantastic response of Harold Hill and Noak Hill residents past and present. Their willingness to share time, skills, photographs, memorabilia and memories allowed us to present a wide ranging impression of life in this part of Havering throughout the past century, I am sure the following extracts from a range of reminiscences used in the exhibition will allow all who read this to appreciate the rural and the urban experience in Harold Hill and Noak Hill within living memory.

Noak Hill

James Quilter - Mr. Quilter's grandfather, also James, came to Manor Farm on the Neave's Dagnam Park estate in the 1890's. He purchased Manor Farm in 1919 when Sir Thomas Neave, 4th Bt. sold the majority of his estate in this area. James Quilter produced a copy of the catalogue from this sale for us to use in the exhibition a vital primary source, and identified his grandparents and father, Percy, recently returned from the First World War in the Victory Hut photograph in Havering Village to Harold Wood.

Sadly, James Quilter died earlier this year. Both Don and myself are glad we got to know him a little and recall with fondness the evening we shared with James and his wife Audrey, from which these reminiscences are drawn.

On delivering milk to the Priory, built in a mixture of Tudor and Gothic styles around 1840 and demolished by the London County Council in the mid 1950's

"I used to deliver milk up there from the farm every morning. And you'd go up there on a nice sunny, summer's morning about half past eight, and you'd walk down the gravel at the back and there was a lovely brick wall with fruit on it - Morello cherries.... and you went down and into the courtyard and then round ... and there was the kitchen with a big scrubbed, white table, and the cook.... and it was cool (sighs). Unless you've ever seen it you can't imagine how lovely it was, and peaceful... It was beautiful, really beautiful."

A vivid description of Mr. J. Mallinson of New Hall Farm illustrates beautifully the rural lifestyle and economy:

"He was a cattle dealer - farmer and cattle dealer. He was a very neat, dapper sort of man. He used to wear a lightweight suit in the summer and he used to have a stick with a handle and I can see him walking along, swinging this stick around... When he was haymaking, and we all used to stack the hay loose in those days, he could never wait for it to be made enough, you know, and he'd get it up, get it up and then of course it would overheat and they'd cut it out, because if they didn't cut it out it would have gone up in flames. I can remember that happening quite a few times because he was that sort of man. He used to drive, not personally, but his chaps used to drive a bunch of cows down the Main Road on a Wednesday (to Romford Market).

Any that weren't sold came back at the end of the day. I can't remember how many of the local farmers patronised him, 'cos they used to sell cows to all and sundry. There were numerous cattle dealers in those days. There was Appleby at Rochetts Farm and Pain at High House Farm - he was a farmer and dealer, and there was Harris at the Poplars at Brook Street on the A12. There's three or four so there must have been money in it, mustn't there?"

The licensee of the Bear is colour-fully captured by Mr Quilter:

"The old boozer! The guy that was in there when I was a nipper was Sid Bloomfield. He used to take bets. He did a bit of bookies running and my father used to give him a bet or two and if the horse won held always have been too late to get the money on."

Later, the Bear was kept by Bert Aves, remembered by our next interviewees, Pauline Schollar and Betty Galpin, who were children just before and during the Second World War:

"Oh the Bear, old Bert Aves used to run the Bear and the 'jug and bottle' was in the middle bit. We used to go down there sometimes, get a bottle of stout or something - NOT FOR US! We knew Bert Aves, he used to deliver crates of beer for the shoot, in his Austin. I remember that car, it was like a square Pauline Schollar."
- Pauline Schollar

They both recall a typical village way of life with a squire, church, pub, school, village hall and cricket team:

"There were characters too, such as Lottie Knight and Ephram Barker, who used to wear some of Sir Thomas' old long-tailed coats, and sometimes a Hamburg style hat, and when the horses passed his door he would come out in that attire and get the horse manure for the garden.

There used to be the regular tradespeople come round, the old boy with the fish basket from Straight Road and the Ice Cream man with his three-wheel trolley. The shop was Nell Knott's. We used to use her shop quite a lot and I (Pauline) can remember being so small that I had to stand on a box to have a look. She ran a Christmas Club and when she was there they had one of the old Sun Insurance marks over the door. She used to have tea rooms as well. On a Sunday she would sometimes have ice cream to sell but then of course if it poured of rain and nobody came up for a ride or walk in the village, she was in trouble wasn't she? So we used to do rather well with ice cream. The Post Office was a very small piece on the side of the Keeper's Cottage (where Pauline lived).

Practically everything to do with the school was a Ing village occasion. Because the school was a focal point. There was a cloakroom and the refectory was built further on. In this school we just had one big classroom and then out the back, where the bar is now, is where the, what we called the babies class, was. About a certain time every afternoon the Suffolk Punch horses would be coming back up to Robert Watt's farm (Hill Farm) and Bob Ovall used to sit on the horse at the front, and we'd all be craning our necks to look out of the windows to see him go by with the Suffolk Punches. For the war effort we made hurdles on the playing field opposite the school. They stuck the uprights in and brought all the hazel twigs for us to make hurdles.

There would also be a May Queen and dancing around the maypole in the school grounds. And the big event at Easter of course was when all the children of the village, up to a certain age, went up to the mansion to get Easter eggs from Sir Thomas... as long as you went to church first!"

Pauline, whose father was the Neave's gamekeeper, also remembers the shooting syndicate:

"A lot of those were titled, and we used to be fascinated. On a shooting day it was quite something. First of all my mother was packing up all the beaters' sandwiches and then everybody would descend on our house, then off you would go. I mean I did go beating a couple of times, my father relented, he wouldn't really have girls... and then my mother would prepare a lunch in our house, all round the table there'd be about 10 or 12 guns. At one stage later there was Mr. Dove, an American who took on the shoot and I remember during the war he sent us a parcel from America. Mrs. Marriott brought it to the school to be distributed and then I had to go to the Priory and sit in the study and write the letter of thanks."

The arrival of Harold Hill changed the character of Noak Hill forever and was well remembered by James Quilter, whose family lost much of Manor Farm to a Compulsory Purchase order, that only paid pre-war prices in 1946, and which saw so many of their neighbouring farms disappear from the map.

Prefabs

There was a massive housing crisis in Britain following the Second World War. In London, the piecemeal housing developments of the inter-war years had done little to deal with severe overcrowding and poor housing in the working class areas near the centre. The terrible bombing of many of these same areas coupled with a 'baby boom' brought the situation to crisis point. Harold Hill was part of the London County Council's response to the problem and in time over 30,000 people would make the journey from London to the Essex countryside. However, before work began in April 1946 on the construction of the permanent houses at Harold Hill, in July 1947, the first people arrived to live in 'pre-fabs'. These temporary homes described by Aneurin Bevan, the Housing Minister, as 'rabbit hutches' lasted, in some cases for nearly 20 years. Many, like Margery Penney, who lived in the 'pre-fabs', think better of them than Bevan did:

"We moved into a 'Prefab' on the 8th January, 1948 when there were just 'Prefabs' between Chatteris Avenue and Straight road, stretching along from Sexton's Stores to Myrtle Road. This, in snow, frost and ice and all with a six month old baby.

Although they were single storey, they were quite large and very convenient. We had a large kitchenette with fitted cooker and wash boiler, which was butted onto a spacious bathroom, two bedrooms and a living room. The walls and ceilings were of plaster board.

The units were made in a factory and were fitted together on a site by German prisoners-of-war. Our 'Prefab' backed on to a wood yard in Straight Road, which gave us some privacy. We rented it from the London County Council, later the Greater London Council.

I had three more children whilst living there, we managed whilst they were young. The children had the main bedroom and my husband and I slept in the smaller bedroom. Although we had a large double bed and originally a cot, there was plenty of room.

The bedrooms were fitted out with steel cabinets and wardrobes. There was no heating in them. The one dissatisfaction we had was that the heating arrangement in the living room was so poor, especially in the winter. There was one stove which had a mica fronted door with a steel chimney. Consequently, the heat loss up the chimney was considerable. An immersion heater in the airing cupboard, in the bathroom, supplied the hot water. The bathroom was very good as it was huge and I could dry clothes in there. When the children were small I often had five lines of washing dripping over the bath, because in those days we did not have a washing machine or spin dryer. We had just what was provided in the 'Prefab', an electrical washboiler which heated up the water. You boiled up your clothes and wrung them out with your own wringer.

Most 'Prefabs' had a refrigerator built in, but we had to wait until the following December for our one to befitted in. You can appreciate how difficult it was to keep food fresh and safe, because that summer of 1948 started at the end of March and continued until the end of September. Extremely hot, this necessitated shopping nearly every day.

Sexton's Stores was the only shop locally, combining butchery and groceries. (Once the 'Prefabs' were erected, a few lock-up shops were built in Briar Road). A fishmonger with his van would stand in Straight Road once a week. There was a lock- up hut that supplied green-grocery.

We had a terrific garden backing as we did onto the wood yard. We learned our gardening from books and were quite pleased with our efforts. Plenty of space for the children to play cricket, etc., without annoying the neighbours. We considered we were lucky as some 'Prefabs' had very small gardens.

We lived in the 'Prefab' for fourteen years and transferred on 8th July 1961, to a three bedroomed house in Melksham Gardens (we cried the night before we moved as we had loved the 'prefab' so much. If only another bedroom could have been added to the 'prefab', we would have been happy to stay). Once in the house expenses were quite prohibitive, besides having to furnish a third bedroom and stairs, we had to supply all our kitchen ware, stove, washing equipment, etc., so we considered employment for myself whilst the children were at school. I saw an advert for an office job at 'Lovable', the bra factory, applied and was successful. This was close to our new home and the young children were at Broadford School which was on the opposite corner, so any problems with them I was easily contacted."

Building Harold Hill

Ken Honeyman was a foreman fitter for French's who built most of the estate, his experiences give an insight into the terrible conditions people were obliged to live in and some idea of the difficulties associated with the building of Harold Hill:

"I came out of the army, had nowhere to live and I heard they was building houses at Hainault. So I went there, I was a mechanic you see and I got a job as a fitter. I worked there from April 1946, 'til come the end of 1946 they started sending me to the prefab estate to look after the machines there, every time they had a breakdown.

I found out, by working there (Hainault) I had no priority on getting a house. So I said I'll have to look for a job with a house thrown in. They said don't be hasty, we're hoping to send you to Harold Hill, we can probably fix you up with a caravan. It was somewhere to live so that made things a bit different. At that time everybody was running around squatting in army huts. Then we moved over to here and they gave me what was, as I say, 'a shed on wheels'.

It was a van normally supplied by a steamroller driver. It was on big iron wheels and made of wood. So I bought a couple of single beds and hinged them together and that was our sleepings... with the baby in a cot... The place became an absolute quagmire once we were in. The whole place was flooded. It rained and rained and we had nowhere to dry clothes. In actual fact, not long after people moved in there was talk of moving them out again. They built a pumping station and it just couldn't handle it. The water had to be transported by road to the prefabs and put down a manhole there."

Ken and his wife were later moved to the old Baptist schoolhouse near the Colchester Road, a little better but we had no water and we had rats.... I had to bring water home for drinking.

Ken's memories of building Harold Hill are equally gloomy:

"At the start of this job, alongside the Colchester Road there was a huge pile of hardcore and I think that was coming from London - the bombed out buildings of London. A huge pile of hardcore with a bulldozer sitting on top, that was my first impression of Harold Hill.

This whole job was hard going, I mean, I was a foreman there and I had too much to look after. We had new machines coming in I hadn't seen before. We had tractor shovels, they hadn 't been heard of on building sites before, I learned about them as I went. We had a lot of French's machines, machines hired from elsewhere and the LCC were buying their own.

I didn't come into contact with the tenants much, except when they had a problem. I used to go down and see to it first shot even though it wasn't my job like. They used to come knocking on the caravan at night sometimes."

Pioneers

Those who came to Harold Hill in the early years refer to themselves as 'Pioneers' a reference to the lack of shops, schools, churches, pubs, or indeed footpaths and roads. The vast majority were delighted with their new homes. Iris Williams gives a typical view:

"When we came I thought it was lovely. I lived in Dagenham as a girl where we had gardens and trees. When we moved back to London it was dirty and smoky, and the only grass and trees were in the parks. When we came to Harold Hill it was spacious; we had gardens and where I lived there was a big green in front of the house so it was like living in the country. From our home in Penzance Gardens we could walk to South Weald a few miles up the road.

Our house was a new one, we were the first tenants... I got on well with the neighbours. I had viewed our house with three other people, one of them was the next door neighbour I have got now and the other lady lived at the back. Because of the tragic event of the day (King George VI's death February 6th 1952) it brought us together to chat. At first we used to celebrate the day we moved in every year and have a meal together.

...Although we loved the countryside there weren't many facilities... even when they built the Hilldene shops there were no buses to get us there. Although I liked walking, it was a long way to carry shopping."

The problem of shopping is remembered too well by Marjorie Gill and Peggy Watson. Apart from the distances involved there was also the problem of rationing:

"The nearest shops were at Harold Wood so it was a long trudge down there. My marriage allowance was also to be collected there. That meant pushing both of them in a pram once my second boy was born. I remember once - the grocer used to put the eggs in a paper bag - the bag was weak and all the eggs dropped, so he put them into another bag for me, cracked and broken, and I had to carry them home like that. We weren't entitled to any more."
- Peggy Watson.

"I remember before the Petersfield shops were built that we used to walk to Green's Stores in Harold Wood. We still had ration books then, we all used to troop, in all weathers, snow, rain... I remember fainting once in the snow when I was pushing the two babies in the pram. When you got to the grocers there used to be a huge queue."
- Marjorie Gill

Eventually shops and schools were built. By the late fifties there was a thriving Harold Hill Industrial Association and the factories on the estate brought work closer to home for some of the men and provided part time work at Lovable's and Lee Cooper for many of the women. 1955 saw New Hall Farm open as the estate's first pub. The Morris Dancer, closely followed by the Saxon King, the first purpose-built pub in Harold Hill. Scout groups were formed and by the late fifties many of the parks and playgrounds were established. There was a thriving Community Association based in the dilapidated remains of Gooshays Farm and all over the estate clubs and societies were formed. A library was opened in 1959 by Lord Morrison of Lambeth, Peter Mandelson's grandfather, though a second near the Petersfield Avenue shops never materialised. It was 1965 before the long awaited opening of a swimming pool though a planned cinema never arrived.

Perhaps the most vigorous on the estate were the churches. We were very fortunate to have been loaned Ruby Phillips' unique collection of photographs which trace the history of St. George's Church from its pre-Harold Hill origins as a wooden building on Straight Road opened in 1939 through to its relocation in Chippenham Road. The Baptist Church was equally forthcoming, loaning photographs and a copy of their history. The Methodist Church is now gone and sadly, the only information we gathered arrived too late for the exhibition. Pat Smyth provided a wonderful memoir of his time as an altar boy as the Catholics on the estate established their own churches:

"My family moved onto the Harold Hill estate in approximately the early months of 1949 after having lived in North London and then later in East London for the three years previously.

Originally, in 1946, my family come to England from Wexford in Southern Ireland after my mother had died and my father had remarried. Brought up as strict Catholics it goes without saying that when we arrived in England we had to attend a Roman Catholic school and go to mass each and every Sunday plus all the holy days.

I had a younger brother, Michael, and three sisters and we all used to attend mass. Mass in those days was conducted in Latin. Michael and I were quite familiar with the responses that the altar boys gave when replying to the priest and. this knowledge was to help the both of us in later years when we moved to Harold Hill.

Just to break away here for a moment, and to say that after leaving our quiet seaside town in Southern Ireland with its lovely surrounding countryside, London came over to us as the busiest, noisiest, overcrowded place on earth with hardly any open fields, just bomb sites. So when we came to Harold Hill you can imagine our delight at all the open spaces, fields, and woods. I personally loved it. Although my father had some reservations, as he had to travel to London each day to work.

We attended St. Helen's Roman Catholic School in Brentwood and then we got to be introduced to our local priest whose name was Father Foley. He was everything you expected of a priest, dedicated to his vocation, a warm and caring nature, a real hub of the catholic community on the Hill. He asked my brother and I if we would like to help him out by serving at mass with him as the number of Roman Catholic parishioners were growing and we happened to be the first ones to be asked.

We agreed and started serving mass at Harold Wood Hospital (at the small chapel within its grounds) and also at the saloon bar of The Plough Public House at Gallows Corner. The mass started at 10 a.m. and lasted half-an hour giving us time to turn our small church back into a bar again before the pub opened at 12 midday. It seems strange when I think back now, that we had sermons telling us about the evils of alcohol and there we were, holding a service in a pub.

The masses at Harold Wood Hospital were held at 8 a.m. on a Sunday enabling the nurses to attend. The small church there was quite cosy. Father Foley then negotiated with W. C. French, the main contractor building Harold Hill, to have the use of their works canteen in Petersfield Avenue as our first church on the Hill. It was agreed and we started to use the canteen (a huge nissen hut) every Sunday.

The canteen that we used had fold-up wooden tables and benches in it. Plus the kitchen and counter at one end. There were two, at least I think there were two, stoves in which they used to set light to the off cuts of timber to help heat the place up. The stoves were about twenty inches diameter and about three feet high. They had on top of them a tall metal pipe going up through the roof of the hut acting as the chimney.

Other arrangements regarding the services at Harold Wood Hospital had been made so now every Sunday I would walk from my house in Gooshays Drive (no. 87) with a lovely fireside rug which was coloured deep red neatly rolled up and tucked my arm and made my way to the canteen to see Father Foley and to prepare for mass. For some reason I remember the winter time there. Trudging through the snow and entering the canteen the only other people there at that time before the mass were Father Foley and the man who used to light the stoves before the congregation got there. The place was still pretty draughty particularly from the windows (double glazing had yet to be discovered), and the gaps under the doors let the gusts of cold air blow in.

There was a collection at the end of each service and one only gave as much as one could afford. Part of the money collected went for the up-keep of the priest's house plus his food. At that time he had a rented house in Tring Gardens. Oh yes, before I forget, during the weekdays and before I went to school I used to go to the priest's house for a 6.30 a.m. service (mass) for people that required it.

Another thing that part of the collection was used for was the church building fund. This was the driving force that kept Father Foley going. He wanted, and he got, in a fairly short time, our first church, our first real church, built opposite the shops in Petersfield Avenue. Later they were to turn the church into a hall when they built the church next door. It is now known as The Church of the Most Holy Redeemer.

Father Foley had other ideas too for getting contributions for his building programme. We held large fetes in the field behind what is now the Community Centre in Gooshays Drive and he (Father Foley) invited celebrities to come and open then, foregoing their fees. Anne Shelton and 'Two Ton' Tessie O'Shea are two names that I remember who opened two of the fetes plus a star from a show in the West End at that time (Show Boat). They raised a lot of money at these events and sometimes I wish someone would organise a show like it in Central Park and recreate what was at that time a fantastic community spirit."

In many ways Pat captures the spirit of Harold Hill's pioneers, the sense of creating something new, often in adversity, and it illustrates the tremendous sense of community and identity, so evident in many of the conversations I have had with Harold Hill residents over the past couple of years.

To conclude this article I will quote Frank Coffin's deposition to a 1994 Local Inquiry by the Boundary Commission. Sadly, Mr Coffin died earlier this year. His own words give some sense of his own massive contribution to Harold Hill and to the borough of Havering whilst accurately summing up fifty years of achievement in Harold Hill:

"I moved to Harold Hill from Peckham in October 1952. I have served the community as a Labour Councillor for nineteen years in one of which, 1971/2 I was the Mayor of Havering. I was appointed to the Bench in 1980 and sat as a Justice of the Peace until 1979.1 was awarded an MBE in 1971.

As Borough Councillor and Magistrate I have been closely in touch with the residents of Harold Hill and understand their thinking and aspirations. I am convinced that having been involved in building up a recognisable community of which they are proud, the people of Harold Hill have no wish to see it fragmented in any way.

...They came to an area entirely different from the ones they were leaving. There were, at first, no schools, no churches, no shops, no cinemas, no public houses, only a shack in which to meet. Some went back to live with relatives but most held on, seeing the area develop around them. They formed local organisations to cater for their individual interests. As they had to rely on each other for help in the early days, this community caring made them rely less and less on outside help. Today Harold Hill is home to them. They have a shopping centre of their own with main Post Office, Boots, Woolworths, building societies, banks, hairdressers, yes and fish and chip shops.

Everything for their weekday needs, churches and a synagogue to cater for their weekend needs. Schools now teach the grandchildren of the early intake....

We are proud of what we have created together..."