Daihatsu Rainham car dealer was Brian Ward Garages Ltd in the 1980s, This main dealer was on the A2 High Street Rainham Kent.

Photo of Daihatsu Rainham Brian Ward Garages Ltd taken in approx 1986. Photo thanks to Sarah Allan

The location was Amoco petrol station which is now the Asda garage on the A2 High Street Rainham

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Category: History Articles

These photos were taken in 1988 to mark the 10th anniversary of Rainham Historical Society by planting trees in Longley Road. The trees are still there as of 2025.

The photos show founder members Pat and George Fryer with Renda and Eric Cross. The photos show Pat and George each planting a tree to celebrate the anniversary along with the then Mayor of Gillingham.

The third photo shows an outing of the club around the same time.

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After the Second World War in 1946 my parents along with many others were given a prefab to live in at Wigmore. We all loved it in the summer. We lived on the corner of Wigmore Road and Fairview Ave. We were the Wilson family. Vincent and my sister Denise. Next to us was the Clements family Ronald and Barbara. Roger sadly passed. Further up Wigmore Road was the Hodges family. We all knew one another on the estate.

It was a great life although in the winter there was ice on the inside the windows and you took your clothes to bed with you so they were not frozen in the morning.

Wigmore Road was a flint road from the Spyglass and Kettle all the way up to Wigmore Woods. It was made into a tarmac road in 1953. In the woods lived a terrible looking lady in a wooden bungalow. When she died in 1951 all those in the prefabs that surrounded her bungalow were given something from her property. We were given her front door bell.

She also left the money to turn the land into a playing field for the children that lived there. Most of the children went to Hempstead Infants and Juniors Schools walking some distance to School. No parents took us there as most of our parents worked. My dad left at 6am to go to Rochester on his bike. My mum was picked up at 6am by lorry along with all the others who worked on the farms. Our fridge was a 5 gallon drum that my Dad sank in the garden to keep the milk, butter, and meat fresh. It was not perfect but it worked well most of the time.

There were 2 butchers shops.  Food was still rationed and the butcher not only sold meat but butter cheese eggs and sometimes bread. The butchers we used was one of the group of shops opposite Woodside where Wigmore shops are today. There was another butchers near the Smallholders Club.

Sometimes my parents took us to Fairylands Club with a bar a band and bingo. It was further along the road from Wigmore shops.

Down the road from the Spyglass and Kettle was Terry's Dairy and a little further down on the bend was a little shop that we found handy for our pennyworth of sweets on Saturday morning. No television or phone. That was in a red box. We just had a radio. How things have changed.

Vincent Wilson

Terrys Dairy/Dairies Wigmore Hempstead Kent Old Photos of Smallholders Club Wigmore Rainham Kent

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• 1950s
• rainham1950s
• rainham prefabs

This photo of Rainham High Street might be familiar as it has been used in the Old Photos of Rainham book previously but this updated picture comes with a fascinating story! Read on for more details.

 As the author of the Rainham History website I get many copies of photos sent through, many of which are previously unseen but some are examples that have appeared elsewhere. Around 10 years ago I received some scans of various scenes around Kent from Tony Carruthers but didn't have any more info about locations or dates. Fast forward to July and Hamish Mackay Miller passed on a box of old photos which also contained some original 6"x 4" plate glass negatives including the Action Forum cover photo that dated to approximately 1910. This scene shows one of the earliest trams that came to Rainham along with the area around the High Street and Station Road. The White Horse is still the same building but the Cricketers was rebuilt in the 1930s further back from the road. Hookers garage was replaced by Barclays Bank, again in the 1930s.

I tried to scan the negatives but with limited success so contacted local photographer Claire Colston who has been working with old cameras and developing the results in her darkroom. 

Claire writes: Printing from glass plates differs slightly to film especially plates that are fragile and 120 years old. Just a tiny finger print or bit of dirt especially on the emulsion side of the glass is always harder or impossible to remove compared to more modern day film. Still I managed to clean up the glass plates fairly well and I only handled them with surgical gloves on as cotton gloves tend to slip. There is a thumb print of one of the plates that could only have occurred when the emulsion side was still wet, this has to be the original photographers which I find amazing. It was quite tricky to get the settings right on the enlarger to contact print these but after trial and error I was very happy with the results. Some dodging and burning was called for. 

There was no need to enlarge these negatives as they are so big to start with. Enlarging would be tricky but possible but detail would be slightly lost the bigger we made them. This is a direct positive of the original negative. What a privilege it was to work with these glass plate negatives. They are art in their own right I believe. Two of the pictures have the same lady and boy in yet are a few miles  apart. There is no doubt in my mind that this was the photographers wife and child. What fascinates me is how did the photographer and his family get around? These negatives were taken on a half plate wooden and brass large format camera which would have been extortionate in its day.  Whoever took these was a professional and these would have been made into postcards in their day. I use these cameras too and it is a real art but so satisfying to get an image. Scans have their place but I think you will agree printing these in the darkroom in the way that was originally intended does produce slightly better results.

Other photos from the same series include these from Gillingham, Sittingbourne and Teynham

The Grand Picture Variety Theatre/Cinema Jeffrey Street/Skinner Street Gillingham Old Photos

Sittingbourne A2 Canterbury Road around 1910 in Old Photos

Old Photos of Green Street/Lynsted Teynham Around 1910

 Rainham High Street 1910 with Cricketers Inn pub

 Green Lion pub and Vicarage House on the left (read more about THE GREEN LION PUBLIC HOUSE by Hazel Staden)

Gillingham Park 1910

Royal Naval Hospital Gillingham 1910

 Ships on River Medway 1910

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• 1900s