The cover of Action Forum recently featured a view of Rainham High Street in 1963, which shows a detached house on the left, opposite Orchard Street. That house was called Conningsby, and it was where I lived as a baby and infant, and it was my Mother's home for many years.
My Grandmother, Alice Hughes, had moved there with her four children, Stuart, Gladys, Dorothy (my Mother) and born in 1927, Bernard. The photograph below, shows, on the left, Gladys and Bernard,
standing outside Conningsby in 1933, when a photograph was being taken by a postcard company.
Two years later, Bernard, having been playing football on Rainham Recreation Ground, was walking home with his ball under his arm. He walked up Scott Avenue and turned right onto the High Street heading home, but, at a point opposite the current Charcoal Grill, an older boy punched the ball out of his arm and into the road. Rainham High Street in 1935 was nothing like the busy road it is today, and vehicles were few and far between, but, sadly, when Bernard stepped into the road to retrieve his ball, he was struck by a milk delivery lorry and killed. He was just eight years old.
Following this sad event, my Mother, who had left Orchard Street School at the age of fourteen, to work in London, returned to Conningsby to live with her Mother, who was coping with the loss of Bernard, followed shortly by Stuart having a serious motorcycle accident at Luton Arches, Chatham. It was as a result of his accident that traffic lights were later installed at this dangerous junction.In 1942, during WW2, my Mother, Dorothy married Arthur Brown in St. Margarets Church. They had met before the war, while she was working in London and, at the time of their marriage, he was serving on His Majesty's Hospital Ship Vasna. They had a very short honeymoon before he had to return to his ship, and they did not see each other again until March 1945, when the Vasna returned to the UK for repairs. After just a week, they were, once again, separated until he was demobilised from the Navy in 1946, however, on the 8th November 1945, in Canada House, Gillingham, which was then a Royal Naval Hospital, a boy was born, and in memory of his Uncle Bernard, that boy was named Bernard - and that boy was me, Bernard Brown. From the early fifties, I lived with my parents in Lower Pump Lane, and went to Rainham C of E School in Station Road, followed by Chatham Technical School. In 1974 I moved to Henry Street and, three moves later, in 2006, I moved to Burgundy, France, but regularly visited my Mother in Rainham until Her death, at the age of ninety-six, in January 2015. I well remember her delivering copies of Action Forum, on her bicycle, to Lower Rainham residents, in it's very early days. It would be lovely to hear from anyone who remembers me.
Notes:
The other attachment shows the last photograph of Bernard Hughes, taken at Wakeley Road School when he was six years old.
