Walking to Fairview School as a child in the 1970s
I grew up in Rainham & Wigmore in the 1970s and went to school at Fairview Infants with Miss Akehurst as head and then Juniors where the headteacher at the time was Mr Queen. The walk to school seemed like a couple of miles going up from Marshall Road to Drewery Drive but looking now on maps it says only a mile! It's surprising how many shops and businesses that used to exist even what I consider that recently (although it's now over 40 years ago!) no longer exist. Walking school buses are seen as a new thing and certainly weren't known as such in the 1970s but we did much the same by meeting friends at different points on the route to school picking up more people as we went. Occasionally if it was raining really heavily then we might get a lift but with only one car in the family at the time this was not a common occurrence.
Walking up Edwin Road there was Munden's Newsagent on Durham Road opposite the junction with Edwin which is now a private house. I'd stop there on a Friday to get my weekly comic and spend a few pence on Space Dust or some similar sweet with the remaining money. Later on it was Smash Hits to find out the latest pop news. On the corner of Edwin Road towards East Hoath Woods there was another shop, initially a DIY shop run by Tony & Betty Sharman as I recall, which became a video rental and finally general store before closing in the late 1980s and converting to flats.
Going along Springvale there was the Smallholders Club which still exists although now much bigger and on the opposite corner of Springvale & Woodside (number 55 Woodside) was a butchers shop shown in Kelly's Directory as Fred Beal, Butcher. Again that's now a private house. Going up Bredhurst Road there was a dairy on the right hand side. Originally this was Terry's Dairy but was bought out by Unigate in the 1970s and the land has now been developed for housing.
Further up Bredhurst Road opposite the turning for Fairview School was Wigmore Park where we'd occasionally go to play on the swings and roundabout. Sometimes we'd take the path opposite the Woodside post office instead and walking up by the side of the Howard Hall, the former St Matthews Church for Wigmore and past another small park next to the Scout hut. I remember this park had one of the old wooden roundabouts you could sit on as it was turned which wasn't something many other parks had.
Memories of teachers at Fairview School include Miss Davison, Miss Kitchener, Mr Roome, Mr Thomas, Mrs Bone, Mrs Terry and Mr Baker who I remember smoking a pipe and the very distinctive smell of pipe smoke afterwards! Every summer the Fairview Schools had a June Fair to raise money for the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) and I remember my parents helping out setting up stalls over several years. My mum was a keen baker with Bredhurst WI and would often be baking trays of cakes or biscuits to sell at the fair. One attraction was the Fancy dress competition and the photo below is of Fairview Junior School fancy dress competition approx 1981.
My grandmother lived on Woodside and often after school we would often go to her house for dinner and being near to school it was a convenient place to get collected from later on. If she'd ever run out of any items for cooking dinner she'd send me along to the Co-operative store at the end of Woodside/Hoath Lane or the butcher's shop next door. When the Co-op closed in the late 1980s it became a pet store and is now a takeaway and Raj Rani. The butcher's shop is now a hairdressers.
View of Woodside looking towards Hoath Lane where the Co-op shop was located
As a keen stamp collector as a child the other place I regularly visited to buy new stamps when they were issued was Wigmore Post Office. I can't remember when it happened but it has been extended and the internal layout changed significantly since then.