The Rainham/Purfleet area has been in use by man since the days of the so –called ‘Cavemen’. You can see some of the petrified tree trunks still remaining today from a 6,000 year-old Neolithic forest, opposite the very northern end of Wennington Marsh, in the Thames foreshore. However, much of Rainham came to use in…
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North Woolwich Station opened back in 1846, making it one of London’s oldest surviving stations. The Grade II listed building in East London was using steam trains when it opened and only moved over to diesel locomotives in 1963. It was originally built to serve Woolwich, on the south side of the river, as the…
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Many comprehensive histories of the mills have been written online, so here is just a very brief overview of their past, present, and future. The grain mills at Silvertown are perhaps one of the last substantial remnants of London’s docklands and a symbol of their decline in the light of the area’s very contrasting redevelopment….
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Taken in 2017, we captured the start of demolition of dozens of houses as part of a multi-billion pound regeneration scheme of Canning Town and Custom House, with 10,000 homes set to be built on the site of these now demolished homes. The single storey buildings on Wouldham Road, Chedworth Close, Rathbone Street and Clarkson…
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Whilst working in the area, I decided to go on a walk and stumbled across this purely by chance. Just a few minutes walk away from the Olympic Stadium, this Second World War pillbox was built around 1940 and forms what would have been part of the outer London defence ring – one of the…
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The Slade Green HAA site (also known as ZS1) was the most easterly anti-aircraft site built inside the London Inner Artillery Zone. Dating back to the late 1930’s, it was possibly built as a prototype to be used as a last resort should any aircraft have passed by the other defences along the river Thames….
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Purfleet Heritage & Military Centre is a museum set up inside Magazine No.5 from the Royal Magazine of Gunpowder. This MOD magazine (which means an explosives and ammunition store) was contracted in 1759, consisting of five buildings, plus a proof house for testing the explosive. Four of the magasines, which would have held up to…
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What is RAF Hornchurch? Hornchurch Country Park covers almost 105 hectares on the former site or RAF Hornchurch. Used today by dog walkers, fishermen and families; many historic remains are scattered around the park and we went to explore what still survives from the Second World War. The airfield has existed since 1915 as ‘Sutton…
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Those of you who travel past West Ham station on the C2C train line will be familiar with the sight of Bromley-by-Bow gas containers. Upon closer inspection, you will see that these ugly industrial monstrosities are in fact works of art from the bygone era of the Industrial Revolution. The first industry known to be…
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Valence House is an old manor house in Becontree, Dagenham. It is the last survivor of Dagenham’s five manor houses. Whilst the Becontree estate of many miles of houses cropped up almost entirely as a ‘homes for heroes’ housing scheme for Great War veterans and their families in the 1920s, the area was once originally…
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