History Articles

I was wondering whether the attached photograph of a football team might be of interest to you. My grandfather William (Bill) Weekes is the third from the right in the back row. I know he played for Rainham in the New Brompton League at one time. I assume  this is a photograph of the Rainham team, although it is possible he may have also played for another team at one stage. I don't know the date of the photograph, but judging by how old my grandfather looks I would guess that it would be around 1920. 

History Articles

Rainham History - Old Photos of Rainham is now on Facebook, hopefully another, better way to be able to share memories from the past in Rainham and post and answer questions. The forum that was previously used is likely to be switched off soon as it is more difficult to manage and gets regularly spammed.

You can access the Facebook page here http://www.facebook.com/RainhamHistory and share any questions or information on the wall

History Articles

In today's connected world when even your mobile phone can play music and videos and store your entire music library in a device smaller than a pack of cards it's hard to Imagine a time when the only way to play and listen to music was on a radio, vinyl LP or cassette.

No CDs, no mp3, no YouTube, no Internet and portable cassette players bigger than a current mobile phone. For a teenager with limited funds unable to buy the latest albums the only way to listen to their choice of music was to record from the radio onto cassette and the ideal time for that was Sunday between 5 and 7pm during the Radio 1 Top 40 show.

Listening intently to the chart positions to work out where your favourite song would be and consequently what time it would be played . Preparing the cassette so that all was ready to press record as soon as the DJ announced the artist and song title but after they had finished speaking became a finely honed art so that you avoided the cut off words and tried to catch as much of the intro as you could.

Unlike today's iPod's or MP3 players there was no direct access to listen to each song so you had to fast forward or rewind and guess the number of seconds to reach your desired track. The introduction of music search that detected the gaps between songs was a revelation quickly overtaken by CDs where you could program tracks and jump to them in any order.

History Articles

With all the current news about HS2 being planned and the route from London to Manchester via Birmingham I thought it might be useful to collect some of the photos together for the HS1 High Speed One Channel Tunnel rail link construction project.

HS1 High Speed One Channel Tunnel rail link, also known as Channel Tunnel Rail Link CTRL runs from the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone to St Pancras station in London running through some of the most picturesque parts of Kent with many new tunnels, bridges and viaducts constructed for the opening in 2003. The route is 67 miles from London to Folkestone.

History Articles

Siloam Farm is situated on Mierscourt Road Rainham and has long historical connections with mentions in many documents about the history of Rainham.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/927708

Rainham Cricket club used to play at Siloam Farm

History Articles

There has been a lot of change with petrol stations in Rainham over the last few years with many closing and others changing hands between different brands. When I was growing up there were three more petrol stations in Rainham that no longer exist.

Parkwood Green - where St Pauls church is now located was a petrol filling station until the early 1980s when the site was abandoned and remained derelict until the church was built.

Rainham Mark (Texaco, previously Shell garage and now Enterprise Car Rental)

Photo below taken in 2002 - was unleaded really only 76.9p per litre then!

Station Road, Rainham (now closed and car dealership)

 Greens of Rainham on A2 between Rainham and Newington - Vauxhall car dealer now Hyundai

Maidstone Road, Rainham opposite Manor Farm pub (closed, now Hidsons/Olympic motors Car dealership)

Other sites have changed hands over the last few years:

Wigmore, Maidstone Road, was Total Petrol station, now operated by Shell.

Wigmore, Hoath Way next to Sherlodge garage was Shell, then operated by Harvest Energy. Now closed and being used for housing

History Articles

The main A2 between London, Canterbury and Dover runs through Rainham. Interestingly the road has a number of different names as it passes through from Gillingham to Rainham and then on to Sittingbourne.

One of the names for the A2 as it approaches Rainham from the Sittingbourne direction is Moor Street. Was this because at some point Moors lived here?  Other names for the A2 as it runs through Rainham are:

Watling Street

Sovereign Boulevard

High Street

Broad Walk

Moor Street (see photo below)

Top Road

Do you know any others? If so please post any comments below:

History Articles

The bells of St Margarets Church Rainham. The tower had 6 bells until 1913, the oldest dating from 1582, two more added in 1601.

In 1913 the two smallest ones were cast and all eight were rehung in an iron frame.

The photo shows Rev Tamplin & Mrs Tamplin, Sister Annie, Miss Baker and George Green the verger.

History Articles

The new A249 Sheppey Crossing opened in 2006 to replace the old Kingsferry Bridge between Sheerness and the mainland near Sittingbourne. The previous Kingsferry Bridge was officially opened in 1960 and had single carriageway each direction but could be lifted to allow river traffic by. The Sheppey Crossing is part of the A249 Dual Carriageway between Sheerness and Maidstone. These photos of the Sheppey Crossing were taken in 2007.

The Sheppey Crossing seems to be prone to fog which has caused a number of accidents in the short history of the bridge since 2006. One of the most serious was in September 2013 when over 130 vehicles were involved in a mass pile up along the length of the bridge and left the road closed for many hours. The history of the Sheppey Crossing and Kingsferry Bridge is here

History Articles

I recently visited the Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, West Midlands where a typical village has been recreated with original houses, shops and amenities moved and rebuilt from their original locations to show life in the Black Country from early 1800s to around the 1930s. There were plenty of hands-on things to do including children being able to play with toys from the early 1900s. One of these was a metal hoop toy that you had to balance and push along the street with a handle as per the photo below.

Amazingly when we got back home I had received an email with some old photos of Rainham from the 1900s and one of the shots showed a child playing with exactly the same toy along the A2 in Rainham!

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Newspaper headlines from The Guardian on 17th October 1987 following the Great Storm that hit the UK overnight on 16th October 1987. Photos of damage caused by the Great Storm or Hurricane of October 1987

History Articles