by Carla Isbell

Boyhood Strong and Girlhood Graceful
In this School stand side by side
Building life on firm foundations
Adding skills to knowledge wide.
May we ever prove to be
A beacon light for all to see.
- Harold Hill Grammar School Song-middle verse

The recommendation that a housing estate be built at Dagnam Park which was which was to be one of several estates to house the overspill population of London, was first made in a report, 'The Greater London Plan, 1944', written by Professor Patrick Abercrombie on behalf of the Standing Conference on London Regional Planning. The report was published in September 1944. Possibly one of the reasons why Professor Abercrombie selected Dagnam Park was for its well defined geographical boundaries, which were Noak Hill Road and Brentwood Road in the North and South, Straight Road in the West and Paynes Brook which was to be the limit of the estate in the East. These geographical boundaries would give the new estate a distinct identity of its own. In no way would the estate merge indecisively with other areas in Romford.

Actual planning by the London County Council on building the estate began in 1945-46.

The conception was to build a housing estate that would be entirely new in planning design. In 1947, Dagnam Park was announced as a 'new style suburb'. The aim was to avoid monotony using all possible features of the existing landscape, including trees and grasslands which were to be preserved as playgrounds for children when the roads and houses were built. The woodlands and meadows near and around Dagnam Park would be kept as Green Belt land and become public parks and recreation grounds. The Estate would also provide housing for people in all ranges of income.

Local residents read about the proposed new estate to be sited at Dagnam Park, in the Romford Times, dated the 19th September, 1945. There was uproar at the news, not least from the members of the Romford Council who were furious with the paper for breaking the story when they were on the verge of talks with the London County Council about the proposals. Landowners, farmers and householders were alarmed and agitated, and so were many pressure groups like the Ratepayers' Association.

Newspaper Articles

The Housing Acts, 1936 to 1946 and the acquisition of land (Authorisation Procedure) Act 1946. Notice is hereby given that, the Minister of Health in exercise of the powers conferred upon him by the above mentioned Acts on the Twenty-seventh Day of June, 1947, confirmed a compulsory purchase order, entitled The County of London (Dagnam Park, Essex) Compulsory purchase Order, 1946 submitted to him by the London County Council
- The Recorder, Friday 5th Sept., 1947

Considerable uneasiness over the prospect of the L.C.C housing estate at Romford was evident at Wednesday's meeting of the Gidea Park Ratepayers' Association when the outline of the plan, as exclusively revealed in the Romford Times, was explained to Members by Mr. Willis.
- Romford Times, Wednesday 2nd Oct., 1945

"A great dis-service to the public", "an abuse of privacy", and similar phrases were used by members of Romford Council on Wednesday, when they criticized the exclusive story in last Wednesday's Romford Times revealing the plans - of the L.CC for a 10,000 house estate - a "second Dagenham" - to be erected in the Straight Road - Noak Hill Road - Paynes Brook - Main Road quadrangle. Our revelation caused a tremendous sensation throughout this area - particularly in the Gidea Park, Harold Wood areas.
- Romford Times, Wednesday 26th Sept, 1945

The main landowner. Sir Arundel Neave, was willing to sell the mansion and land of Dagnam Park, but the majority of farmers and houseowners were opposed to a voluntary sale of their property. Many had owned or rented farms during the previous fifty years whilst others had taken years to build up businesses. Because of these vested interests, the County Council were forced to use compulsory purchase powers. The Act of Parliament, The Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) Act 1946, had only just become law.

The first houses to be erected were 500 temporary homes, prefabs, in July 1948. The actual building of the permanent houses began later in 1948 and was completed in 1958. Originally the estate was to be known as Dagnam Park, but it was felt there would be confusion with the other L.C.C. estate at Dagenham, so it was decided to call it Harold Hill.

In a circular issued by London County Council, Housing Department, 1964, the following information was detailed:

The estate contains 8,200 houses, flats, maisonettes and bungalows (population is given as 29,000/30,000). In the North/Eastern area higher rent houses suitable for members of the professional and managerial classes, have been built in the vicinity of the green belt zone ... High land is used for the siting of three-storied flats ensuring a good view over ground for these dwellings and at the same time provides an interesting skyline.

In 1965, Romford became part of the London Borough of Havering.

After the Second World War, Aneurin Bevan became Minister of Housing (1945-47). The housing shortage was one of the major problems fadng Britain. The need was desperate and every M.P. and local councillor was being besieged by endless queues of the homeless. (Foot, 1973) Churchill's building programme before the war had produced houses at a rate of 350,000 a year, but were criticized for the poor quality:

It is difficult to describe the pre-war three to one predominance of private enterprise in providing houses, as successful in anything but quantity ... (Barton, 1963)

Bevan set himself to resolve the housing problem for the lower income group.

To build good houses for the poor on a huge scale was something that had never been accomplished in modem industrial societies. (Foot, 1973)

He set up a procedure to facilitate Local Authorities acquisition of land, by removing the need for public enquiries and hearing. This speeded up the procedure as landlords were not able to have lengthy negotiations. The compulsory purchase of land, Harold Hill, with the secrecy of negotiation with the Local Authority, substantiates Bevan's policy. In his first housing speech Bevan voiced his belief that a housing estate should house all age groups.

I hope that the old people will not be asked to live in colonies of their own - they do not want to look out of their windows on endless processions of the funerals of their friends, they also don'twant to look at processions of perambulators. (Foot, 1973)

He also believed that there should be houses built for different income groups, on the same estate. We see this translated in the Harold Hill estate, where as said before. There were plans from the start to build houses for the higher income groups at the edge of the estate, bordering the green belt, and bungalows for the elderly were built in pockets amongst the other houses.

Bevan opened such a group of dwellings on the estate in 1949 (app. 1). Another one of Bevan's recommendations that had some effect on the estate in Harold Hill, was the square footage allowed in the construction of the houses. Bevan had recommended 900 square feet plus 50 feet per storage, for an average three-bedroomed house, against the 750 sq. feet before the war. The houses in Harold Hill are larger than average, mostly with upstair and downstair toilets.


Social and Economic Changes

The first family was housed on the new estate in November 1948. An article on the Romford Times, described the house as having 115 sq. ft. of flooring space, a living room, sitting room, three bedrooms, kitchen, an additional water closet on the ground floor. Heating in the living room was by an open fire, fitted with a back boiler to provide hot water supply and converter flues to warm a number of other rooms. Other amenities included space for perambulator and fuel and tool stores.

The Mayor of Romford at the opening of the first permanent home on the estate, urged people not to be 'parochial' about new residents. This in view of the controversy which had arisen around the estate. The people of Romford and surrounding areas had not been keen to see a large settlement of East-Enders landing on their doorstep, and obviously the people whose property had been compulsorily purchased according to the newspaper, at 1930’s evaluations, and whose livelihood had been put in jeopardy were very much upset by the scheme and unlikely to welcome the new residents.

Harold Hill had been planned as a 'self-contained community' being enclosed by main roads that effectively provided a boundary and by the hills of green belt area on one side with middle-class houses on its outskirts. Later an industrial estate grew on the South-West corner of Harold Hill, with small factories making products ranging from clothing to furniture, some engineering and industrial products. A shopping centre was to be provided and there were plans for a library and Community Centre.

Who were tenants of this new estate? Where did they come from? The controversy that had arisen regarding this new settlement indicated the fear of the old residents of being swamped by a rowdy lot, coming from the slum areas of London. The first tenants, we are told by the Romford Times, were Mr. Rutherford, a coach driver based at Brentwood, who lived at Beacontree in a five room cottage, with his wife, one son and three daughters. Two other sons were in the Forces and one daughter was in the Women's Land Army. Mr. Rutherford had to get up at 2.30 a.m. to be at work by 4.30 a.m. The move meant he was much nearer to his work and Mrs. Rutherford regarded the accommodation as a 'Lovely home'.
- (Romford Times 1.12.48)

To find out more about the residents of Harold Hill, I interviewed three women, and collated answers to a questionnaire. I was able to get hold of some fifty essays from the Secondary Modem All-Girl School in Harold Hill, Quarles, written in 1959 by 14 and 15 year old girls on 'Life in Harold Hill', in which they describe their arrival at their new home, their likes and dislikes, their hobbies and aspirations.

As far as can be gathered by the girls' writing and from the replies to the questionnaire, the people to be housed on the estate were from London. Places often mentioned are Hackney Bow, Caledonian Road, New Kent Road, Leyton, Holloway, Islington, Shepherd's Bush, Lambeth, Hammersmith, Clapton, Stepney Green, Kensington, Barking, Poplar, East Ham Bethnal Green, Tottenham, and in a few individual cases, Leicester, Birmingham, Southend and Cumbria were mentioned. Of the women interviewed, Edie came from Finsbury, May was born in Bow and Reta lived in Battersea.

The majority of the women had left school at 14, worked in offices, shops and catering or clothing industries. The majority had married just before the war and had children before their arrival in Harold Hill. Husbands' jobs were mostly in London and the travelling to and from work was tiring and expensive. Later many found jobs nearer home at Fords Motor Company in Dagenham and Brentwood or at the Ind Coope Brewery in Romford.

Before the Second World War, people lived in overcrowded conditions, in rented accommodation, sharing part of a house with other families or relatives. We have a good description of the pre-war conditions in Reta's interview:

My mother had eleven children, but lost two, after we settled, let me tell you in the upper flat in a three bedroom house, my mother had the upper flat which we rented. It had one room in which we did everything, cooking, washing, sleeping. We had two small bedrooms and a toilet, but no garden to play in, no bathroom, but we managed.

It was quite fun going to the public Baths, if we had money to spare. My father used to go regularly. We used to say "Dad/can we go?", "Ask your Mother". More often than not she would say "No, have a good wash!"

May married at 21, just before the war in 1937.

I moved into two rooms when I got married, two rooms in somebody else's house, upstairs, no kitchen, we had to go downstairs to get the water, bring the water up. Edie who had three brothers and one sister, remembers living in a house.

Where we had people downstairs, we had two rooms upstairs and when you went downstairs there was only one toilet at the end of the yard, and you had to carry the water. Someone downstairs died, so we managed to get another room. When I tell my grandchildren, they think I am mad! We used to have about six chairs, then we put a mattress on top of that. My two brothers slept on there, my sister and I were in another two beds by the side. We had the gas stove on the landing. We eventually got the use of all of the house. I was nearly married then.

Later, after the war, Edie, her husband and baby lived with her family in a four-bedroomed house in Haringey:

We had a four bedroom house there. I got my furniture in two rooms, and then of course my brother came home, thank goodness, and the other one, we were overcrowded. My sister got married and she lived at home, we were overcrowded. So we did ask (pause) then after the war, the price of properties went sky high, we put the name down with the council and it was a good six years before we got it, and they sent us here.

The Housing conditions after the war were very similar to the ones described by Reta, May and Edie in their childhood 20 years earlier. Carol Watts, who came from Holloway, described in her essay the accommodation that she had left behind:

How different it was. We lived at the top of a pre-war three storey house. We had two rooms. We all slept together in one bedroom. I slept with my brother. In the passage was our oven which was rusty. The heating did not work properly. To reach our sink we had to go down three stairs. It was very small We had no bathroom. To the toilet we had to go down three flights of stairs, it was out in the yard.

The change when the residents arrived on the new estate to take possession of the new houses, was dramatic.

I remember how thrilled I was at having my own bedroom, and how big I thought it was! My mother found the immersion heater, so now instead of boiling kettles of water we could just turn on a switch and within half an hour or so we have boiling water. Then we saw the cupboards in the kitchen. All along one side of the wall "It was a present from Heaven!" as my mother said.
- Carol Watts.

The bath was new to us in a bathroom as before we had just a tin bath which was put way when nobody was using it. Another advantage is the hot water straight from the tap.
- Beryl Agar.

Overcrowding was the major reason for being re-housed, and ill-health was one of the reasons for being re-housed outside the city, in the rural areas. Living in the country had been desirable for the middle and upper classes, hence the evidence of the "Manor House" and obviously the farms, and business families, while it had been more desirable for working-class people to live nearer to places of work in towns and cities. Densely populated London, with its high concentration of pollution, poor housing, was not an ideal place to be for people with poor health. The concern about health, which had started in the 19th Century, was felt strongly by the Government. In 1944 a White Paper had been produced by Henry Willink, the Minister of Health, entitled 'A National Health Service' and a greater commitment to health was shown through the debate that led eventually to the National Health Service Act on the 5th of July 1948. (Foot, 1973)

The reason we were given a house on Harold Hill was that my sister was ill in hospital for two years. When Margaret, my sister, came home, the hospital sent a letter to the London Council saying that we were to be given a house out of London.
- Joanne Emmerson

The only reason we moved out here was my brother's health. He suffers with asthma
- Betty Gardner

When my uncle was stricken with T.B. we were immediately given a house as the doctors were afraid that I would get it as I have been attending the hospital three times a week with a very weak heart.
- Maureen Smith

The fresh air has helped mummy's breathing.
- Janet Spillane

I don't remember much of my former home, but I do recall that I was frequently ill there and spent most of my time at home due to bad health. Since living here however my health has unproved, and I am seldom absent from schooL
- Anne Smith

Some people however found the new accommodation damp and complained of being ill through the winter.

As Harold Hill was situated in the centre of the country, the air did us a world of good. Although, in fact, for some people it does the opposite, because my best friend left Harold Hill after living here for about one and a half year, as she and her young sister's health had become very poor, and they had not been without some kind of illness particularly colds.
- Carol Barwick


School & Work

When the first residents moved to Harold Hill, there were no schools. Children had to be bussed to Romford. Gradually Primary schools were built; the first to be built was the Mead School for infant and junior children. Of the Secondary Schools Quarles was opened on two separate sites as an all-boy and all-girl school, Broxhill on the Noak Hill side and Harrowfield on the Dagnam area side of the estate. Both had separate departments for boys and girls.

Opposite the Broxhill school, across the road, the Harold Hill Grammar school was opened in January 1958. The school was the 200th post war school to be built in Essex, and had been temporarily established in another secondary school on the estate and had 251 boys and girls on roll. Rita recalls that the pupils of the schools on the estate, were often at "loggerheads with each other, children were fighting, the police were called in". One such incident is recorded in an article in the Romford Recorder, 1960 :

A former Broxhill Secondary School pupil and a mob of teenagers gate-crashed a dance at Harold Hill Grammar School. The reason, Romford Court was told last week, was rivalry. But a few hours after a 17 year-old youth was fined £5 for assaulting a Harold Hill Grammar School teacher, both schools denied any rivalry.

Rita explains that Harold Hill since its early days, had always had a bad name :

Harold Hill had started up with vast East-End families, moving in, taking over, naturally some weren't interested in education, to put it mildly, it got a bad name ... I don't know, whether it is because of the influx of so many council families all at once, because you see we have other council estates - pause - but I have never heard of this sort of strife that there was, whether, they, the people that came here were a militant lot, because you see, there was nothing for them - pause - may be, had we had a bit more things at the beginning and things had been devised for the area ...

When the school became comprehensive in 1969, following the re-organisation of secondary education in Havering, the new headmaster sought to change the name of the school in an attempt not to inherit the bad connotation that the name had. One of the residents wrote a letter which was printed in the Express at the time, voicing his/her dismay at reading in a previous article of the Headmaster's reasons for this change.

I have lived here for 15 years and know for a fact that the majority of people are honest, hard -working folk - and since when was that anything to be ashamed of? Any bad names we may have acquired in the past were gained by a small minority living here (which you get in any community), and snobbish people who insist on looking down their noses at council tenants wherever they may be
- E. Gibbs, Bridewater Road, Harold Hill.

It seems to me that the original aim to build a self contained 'community' with its own identity, backfired, as this meant that the people were never accepted by the residents in the surrounding areas. The controversy that arose at the time of compulsory purchase did little to make the new-comers welcome, the well denned borders of the estate, served to divide and separate and do so to this day.

The schools built on the estate were just like the houses, built with thoughtfulness for the well being of their users, light and ventilation were considered in the architecture of the building and plenty of open space was provided for outside sport. These were in great contrast to the old Victorian buildings still in use in the post war period in London. We have many descriptions in the girls' essays.


The school I went to in London was very old and the walls were just bare bricks and the light worked by gas.
- Jennifer Smith

The schools on Harold Hill are quite remarkable, they have all the equipment they could wish for and they also have a gymnasium where we go and enjoy ourselves at playing games. These schools differ from those in London because most of the schools there are over a hundred years old and very dirty. They are very old fashioned and have no gymnasium, when the children have their Physical Training lesson they either have to go into the playground or have no lesson.
- Pauline Richards

But not everyone was happy with the new school in spite of their good accommodation.

The school I attended in London "Burghley Road, Islington", was a very good school, all the teachers were elderly and very intelligent, most of the schools in Harold Hill have teachers who are young and have not long been out of college and have not had much experience with children. The schools are built for the better, modem, mostly with many windows for better ventilation.
- Celia Mandy

At the opening speech of the grammar school, the Minister of Education, Geoffrey Lloyd said:

In order to export we must be able to make things that other countries cannot produce themselves. That's where good education comes in. Grammar Schools like this will produce great brain-power and more scientific knowledge. Grammar schools are of overwhelming importance.
Talking about the 1944 Education Act, Lloyd said that the Act had looked at the future in rather idealist terms. Its essential principle was that ALL children would be educated to the maximum of their ability and that "this school is a practical embodiment of that ideal"
(Romford Times, 1958).

This was the belief that many people concerned with education had in the wake of the reforms which followed the 1944 Education Act, which seemed to imply that meritocracy would produce a society in which selection was based on merit rather than social position (Stanworth, 1981.) This did not materialise, meritocracy did not produce equality, but as Stanworth points out it was the promise of a super competitive society in which inequality would be allocated according to ability. In spite of the ideals of the contemporaries of the time, children in Harold Hill who mostly came from working class backgrounds, continued to leave school early, with few qualifications, a trend that has continued. Harold Hill has the highest unemployment in Havering, albeit not very high on national figures. In 1987, the Borough total unemployment was given as 6.2%, the Hilldene ward had a figure of 10.7% while seven Greater London Boroughs had an unemployment rate of over 15%. That the education system reproduces inequalities as found in society is argued by Bowles & Gintis (1976). As school prepares children for the world of work, it must teach children to conform to what is expected of them in their working lives. In a capitalist society some groups will be required to perform supervised, routine, undemanding work, and the skills that will be required of them, will not be the ones of understanding, challenging, or to develop original thoughts and take initiative.

Moreover by the very fact that school legitimizes inequalities within its system, it has the effect of making it seem a "natural" part of life.

It is no wonder that many working-class boys and -girls reject school. They have a role model in their parents' occupation, their neighbours', and in a study made by Willis (1977) of working-class boys, it was found that they have a realistic conception of what the labour market has to offer them, and manual work does not require many qualifications. It could be argued that this study was located in time of high employment and that need for qualifications might be felt more at time of unemployment

But if the working-class boy is disadvantaged in society, the working-class girl is doubly disadvantaged in comparison. Not only has she to contend with middle-class values in schools, she also has the patriarchal attitudes reproduced in the school system. Stanworth (1981) argues that:

Education far from being, as it was once ironically called 'an equality machine' tends to act as a vehicle for the reproduction of patterns of subordination and domination which characterise our society. If we see school as preparing for work, women whose expected role in the world of work is subordinated to a male role, will of necessity be prepared by the education system to accept their role.

Delamont (1980) is therefore right when she argues that Schools develop and reinforce sex segregations, stereotypes and even discriminations which exaggerate the negative aspects of sex roles in the outside world when they could be trying to alleviate them.

Of course the sex role stereotypes starts a lot earlier in the life of a girl, in the family through her parents' role model and attitudes. The toys she is given normally offer her a passive role, centred around the home, they rarely are scientific or technical. Most of the books for children portray the girls as "good", passive, performing skills required around the home while the boys are portrayed as doers, fixing things, with plenty of imagination and sense of adventure. It is perfectly all-right for them to be naughty. They are boys!

In the verse quoted at the beginning of this extract it can be seen that Harold Hill Grammar School reflected sex stereotypes in its school song. This theme will be continued in a second part which will appear in the next issue. These writings originally formed part of a paper submitted for the University of London Diploma in Adult and Continuing Education.

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