The Colour Shop was located on Rainham High Street on the corner of Pudding Road. Their sign says they were specialists in Wallpapers and Paint. The photo below shows its closing down sale in 1985. The building was originally Edwin Jelly's Clothing Hat Boot Stores Rainham and was still showing as Jelly's Outfitters in 1963. By 1967 The Colour Shop had opened in this building according to Kelly's Directory.

Since the 1990s it has been Hons Chinese Restaurant.  

The shop next door was Kent Kitchen Design Studio and then Arthur Tucker Watch maker/Repairs & Jewellery shop Rainham

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• 1980s

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.

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• coningsby house

In July 1938 Barclays Bank at Rainham moved to new purpose built premises 89-93 High Street on the corner of Station Road where it has remained since. Originally 89-91 High Street was rented out to Mattocks Sweet shop (shown in the photo below Mattocks Sweet shop in the 1950s) but these became part of the bank itself in the late 1960s. The Coronation clock was attached to the wall in 1953 so the photo above from the 1940s was taken prior to that happening. As of 2024 the Barclays Bank building is now a sports bar called The Greedy Banker. 

 Below: Photo showing Mattocks Sweet shop location included within Barclays Bank Rainham in 2001

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• old sweet shop rainham

Elm court during the Second World War was called Gibraltar Gun Emplacement. There were quite a number of large anti-aircraft guns (known as Ack Ack guns) situated on this site which were there to fire at the German bombers as they came over the top of the Medway area. They were using the River Medway and River Thames as navigational guidance points for London. There were quite a number of these gun sites all around the Medway area. As a young boy, I lived a quarter of a mile from the site and these guns were extremely powerful, noisy and hard on the ears. They frequently broke the windows in the houses nearest to them. I lived at number 291 Hempstead Road and the glass in our windows was often shattered. The surrounding fields were disguised as a dummy airfield to distract the German bombers from real airfields. There were also barrage balloons which to me as a small boy looked like elephants in the sky. 

The gun crews (that is the soldiers that were based there) gave us children a party. This would be at the latter part of World War II. This was greatly appreciated by the children as parties with goodies were few and far between at that time. Outside on the corner of the Elm Court site as it now is were several elm trees which in later years caught Dutch Elm Disease and had to be felled which is why the site is now called Elm Court. The cover picture was drawn from memory by my school friend Ted Quy along with a number of others that are on the Rainham History website.

Roland Bird