Rainham Kent Photos & Information
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I attach a couple of JPEG files scanned from original postcards of Rainham, provided by my Godfather, Geoff Gilbert.
The first is a picture of the upper end of Ivy Street and is taken from a postcard dated 1913, which ties up with the 1912 date on the front of the card, and shows the shop owned by W. E. Jones, who was Geoff’s grandfather on his mothers side of the family. The shop was divided into two, with an Off Licence to the right and a Grocery to the left.
Geoff was born upstairs in this house in the room behind the Colman’s Starch advert, although not until the mid 1920’s. His mother lived for many years in No1 Ivy Street, and I can remember visiting her in the house as a small child in the mid 1950’s. Geoff now lives in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. The second is a picture of St Margarets Church and Lockup (which is presumably the wooden structure adjacent to the Church gate!) and is dated 1834, although the picture postcard it was taken from is dated 1914 And me? – well I was born in my grandmother’s (May Boakes) council house at 19 Holding Street in 1951. We lived for many years at 79 Station Road on the corner of Webster Road, and I attended both Soloman Road infants School and (the then new) Wakeley Road Junior, before passing the 11+ and going on to Gillingham Grammar, by which time we had moved to 25 Thames Avenue. We moved away from Rainham in 1964.