Further to my letter in the October 2023 edition, about the Belisha Beacon and then the interesting Chris Morris December edition letter on Tesco/Bowater site, I thought readers might like to know just how different Rainham Mark was in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. In fact it was more like a small village, with a range of shops to cover local needs. My memories start from 1967, when I moved into the area.
Starting from the Rainham end on the north side of the A2, before Elizabeth Court was built in the late 70s, stood an independent butcher’s shop. After a gap, where perhaps a previous shop had been, was a shop (now Sophisticuts) that during my time here has had several reincarnations - I remember it mainly as a greengrocery. Adjacent to this was a shop run by the elderly, and very memorable, Miss Buxton. It was a really old-fashioned general store that had previously been run by her father. Where Enterprise vehicle hire is now located was, from the late 60s, a Shell and then Texaco filling station and forecourt but prior to this it was a hardware store run by Jack Smith - with old fashioned petrol pumps situated on the kerbside.
The newsagent, run by Bert and his indomitable wife, was the next shop. My strongest memory of this shop was the smell of food frying as Bert always seemed to have a frying pan on in the back room.
Then there was the post office which was always busy on pension and family allowance collection days. I particularly remember that, in the 60s and 70s, the postmaster sold Featherby tomatoes, really great tasters, which were grown in the nursery just off Twydall Lane - sadly no longer there. There was an alleyway by the side of the post office which led to a side (barn-style) door in the Belisha pub providing off-licence access, plus the chance for children to buy chocolate and crisps after shops shut at 5.30 or 6 pm. Finally, past the pub and after the drive access to Watling Tyres, was the site of a quite-considerably sized Co-operative grocery store providing fresh meat and vegetables as well as the usual grocery provision. Until the early 70s it still used the overhead pulley system of paying with the deputy manager sitting on a raised desk dealing with the transactions.
With the advent of out of town shopping centres such as Hempstead Valley in 1978, it was inevitable that these small retailers would close and the final death knell for Rainham Mark as a retail area came with the opening of the Tesco store at Courteney Road in the early 1990s.
