The National School (later C of E) at the top of Station Road had been built in 1846. In 1887 the National School continued to function at the top end of Station Road for 180 boys and 160 girls. Samuel Hodson had served as headmaster since 1883 and Miss Emily Charlesworth assisted him while the infant’s school continued to be run by Mrs Brice. The Lower Rainham National School which had been erected in 1876 had about 60 pupils and was run by Miss Knight then by Mrs Seago. A small private school run by Miss Bertha Atkins also existed just off Rainham High Street near the church path.
The National School was enlarged in 1878 and 1884, to hold 600 (205 Boys, 190 Girls and 205 Infants) and in 1908 there were 549 scholars attending.
Some of my contemporaries will be interested to know that even in 1908 our Head teacher, Mr G.R. Bone, and the two Miss Campbells were already on the staff and the Girls' teachers included Miss Rickells. Nearly all female staff were unmarried and 1 believe that it was an act of 1941 which allowed married women to be appointed.
This photo of the National School on the left of Station Road was taken in the early 1970s shortly before demolition and shows the building with the two extensions added in 1878 and 1884. The site is now the location of Wilkinson's shop and Barclays Bank.
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I received this message today. Does anyone have any information to assist?
I wonder if you can help me....I am trying to find out when Perks a grocers situated on the corner of Longley Road Rainham closed and ceased trading.
Hope you can help
This photo of Perks Grocers was from the late 1950s - around 1957/58
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This article about house price rises was written in December 1989 shortly before the market started a long crash! The prediction from Woolwich Building society was that house prices would rise by 11.9% a year over the next decade reaching an average of £200,000 in 2000. The reality was somewhat different! It might seem like prices have been rising forever but the 1990s were quite stagnant for house prices and only started rising towards the end of the decade. Of most interest locally is that prices in Maidstone were predicted to rise by the most in the country to an average of £400,000 by the year 2000. The average still hasn't reached that 17 years later!
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By any standard the winter of 1962-3 was one of the hardest Great Britain has ever had. It has been reckoned that in the Midlands, which didn't have the worst of it, there has been nothing comparable since 1740.
Click to view the whole booklet as PDF about the Long Winter of 1962-63 (a Guardian pamphlet) which was published about the winter of 1962-63 and the impact across the UK.
Even the most conservative estimates for the country as a whole conclude that it was the coldest since 1829-30. It was a winter in which cars were driven across the Thames, pack ice formed a quarter of a mile outside Whltstable Harbour, a family was marooned on a Dartmoor farm for 66 days. It killed at least 49 people. And though its economic effects were not as severe as those of 1946·7, public transport was several times brought to a standstill, and the January power crisis was grave enough to provoke an emergency meeting of the Cabinet. It was a winter to remember. What follows-the day-by-day summary of the chilliest news, the special articles by Guardian reporters and correspondents which appeared in the paper at the time, the illustrations and the statistics is a memorial to the long winter 1962-3.
Photo of cover of The Long Winter 1962-63 Guardian pamphlet
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BLOORS PLACE - Lower Rainham
Bloors Place stands on the Lower Rainham Road, not far from the riverside and Bloors Wharf, which was known in earlier times as Blowers Quay. The quay, and Bloors Place, take their name from the family of le Bloere or le Blore. The house, one of the oldest in Medway, was originally built between 1470 and 1510. Once a simple Wealden hall house, a stone range was added to the rear in the early 16th century, perhaps at the same time as the very large central octagonal chimney was inserted. These improvements were probably made when Christopher Bloor lived there. According to Hasted, Christopher Bloor, who had bought the Manor of Sileham from Sir Antony St Leger, 'rebuilt his seat in this parish ... .in which his ancestors had resided for several generations'. The house was surrounded by walls with defensive apertures known as gun loops, and also special niches, bee boles, to hold the straw skeps where the bees were kept.
Like most old houses, Bloors Place has been frequently altered and extended. In 1710 the front was refurbished. The building was damaged by a fire in the eighteenth century and 'A great part of the old mansion was pulled down circa 1798 or earlier to adapt the size of it to that of a farmhouse, though what still remains of it, with the garden walls, offices, and so on show it to have been of large size, well suited to the hospitality of those times, and to the rank which the founder of it, Christopher Bloor, esq., held among the gentry of the county'. [Kent on line - Parish Clerk.]
The house came indirectly into the ownership of the Tuftons, Earls of Thanet, through Bloor's daughter, Olympia. The Tufton surname is commemorated by monuments to two descendants in St Margaret's Church at Rainham: the chapel at the end of the north aisle (officially St John's Chapel) is often called 'The Tufton Chapel'. An 1851 survey of Sir Richard Tufton's Bloors Place estate describes the house, rooms and all the outbuildings in some detail. It then goes on to make comments on the fields (there were 447 acres of arable, pasture and orchard), and records that the tenant, William Smart, was highly respectable and from the appearance of his farm, stock, etc. a man of substantial property (Holley).
From 1891 a Scotsman named James Stewart had been running the farm, and in 1920 he bought the whole estate for £2S,000. It has changed hands several times since then - when last sold the price was nearly thirty times that sum. According to some recent sale particulars 'The property still boasts a wealth of character features including a heavily timbered interior with feature crown posts and 16th century moulded stone mullion windows to the rear, panelled drawing room and a first floor landing with detail enriched spandrels and moulded stops above the doorway'. The agent at an earlier sale also mentioned 'the delightful wall paintings of fairy tale scenes from the 1950s in one of the bedrooms. During the Second World War SW Fleming lived in the house and in 1950 a well known TV personality Willoughby Gray bought the property and became a popular customer of the Three Mariners pub.
Since then new owners have partly modernised the interior, putting in another staircase, reordering the kitchen and converting an outbuilding to a utility room for example, but any such alterations to a listed building have to be done following detailed planning consultation. Currently planning permission is being sought for exterior changes such as replacing a flat roof with a pitched roof more in keeping with the original house, and also adding a second dormer window at the front.
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Subcategories
Historical tales Article Count: 3
Historical tales
Rainham Life Article Count: 10
Rainham Life
Local Events Article Count: 48
Local Events
Photos Article Count: 143
Photos
Action Forum Article Count: 234
Action Forum is a free monthly magazine that is distributed to the Rainham area covering Wigmore, Parkwood and Hempstead as well. This archive covers old copies of the magazine dating back to its initial publication in 1969 and give a fascinating glimpse into life in Rainham over the last 50 years.
Link to Article Index - Action Forum Index - Photos and Articles from 1969 onwards