Thames Tributary River Rom - Romford

Thames Tributary River Rom
The Rom flows south east and is met by Blacks Brook from the north east
.


The Great Eastern Railway from Liverpool Street to Shenfield runs into Romford Station from Chadwell Heath Station and continues onwards running eastwards

Post to the north Romford
Post to the south Haveringwell
Post to the west New Romford
Post to the east Heath Park



Albert Road
66 Anthony Clifford dance studios. Dance school founded 1994. Previously this was the Romford Working Men’s Club
Albert Road School. Now called Century Youth House. Albert Road Board School was opened in 1884. The school was renamed Manor Junior Mixed and Infants School in 1956. Closed 1979.
Durham Arms
48-50 Freedom Healthcare. This was once Legge Brothers, Hygienic Steam Bakery. Fencing company at the rear.

Angel Way.
Trinity Methodist Church. Built 1888 at what was then the junction of Mawney Road and Linden Street. The building was erected by Messrs J.A. Allen & Sons of Kilburn from plans by Chas. Bell. Some bombing in 1940. In 1971 Mawney Road became Angel Way following the construction of the ring road.
Schools built 1899. Extended 1923 and 1936. Front of red brick
Post office and sorting office. Demolished.
Multi-story car park

Arcade Place
Named after Romford’s first shopping arcade

Atlanta Boulevard
Hollywood Nightclub. Once called Vivid and Elite

Eastern Road
81 Locally listed
84 Locally listed
86 Locally listed
90 St Kilda's, Locally listed
Romford and District Synagogue. The congregation dates from 1933. And a synagogue was registered in 1938. After the Second World War a permanent synagogue was built in the garden of a house in Eastern Road and 1970 a larger one on the site of the house

Exchange Street
Telephone Exchange Locally listed

Havana Road
Named for the now defunct Havana Cinema
Spiral access ramp to car park

Hedley Close
Youth Zone

High Street
2 Golden Lion, 17th inn and one of only a few coaching inns remaining in London. It dates from around 1450 with an early Victorian frontage which hides a 16th house inside –this was once a galleried inn. The Golden Lion was the badge of the Lion of Flanders
15 The Bitter End. Rock venue also called Horne’s.
15 Ford and Firkin. This was once The White Hart, an old in which had been rebuilt in 1896. It was also the brewery tap. The old White Hart dated from at least the 17th and under the Commonwealth the local Divisional Committee met there.
19-21 Havering Museum. It is in some of the old brewery buildings.
Romford Brewery - Frontage remaining. This was founded by Edward Ind at the Star Inn in 1799. He was joined by brothers George and Octavius Coope in 1845. By 1908 the Romford Brewery produced 8,000 barrels of beer a week and employed 450. In 1961 a new bottling hall was built; new tun and wort coppers were installed and keg packaging lines were fully automated. They produced John Bull Bitter, Skol Lager, Lowenbrau and Castlemaine XXXX. The Brewery also had its own railway from 1853 which was accessed from the Eastern Counties Railway by wagon hoist which was soon replaced by an incline. In 1945 the Brewery had two steam locomotives. The frontage in the high street was rebuilt by Charles Dyson. It is in stock brick witrh an arch to the brewery yard. There are replica gates decorated with wrought iron hop vines. The brew house was behind the offices. The Rom flowed beneath the brewery and divided the site. In the wall was a stone from the old bridge “George II Regis Anno Imperii Decimo Reaedificatus', 1738. Some older buildings around the bridge over the Rom remained including some mid 1950s buildings with dramatic ferroconcrete shell roofs. The brewery closed in 1993.
The Brew. The 26-acre brewery site is now covered by a supermarket, cinema, and leisure shops developed by Chetwood Associates in 2002. A ramp wraps round the chimney which was built in 1974. Close to the entrance to the site from London Road is an item from the brew house, by R. Ramsden & Son, 1850.
Salvation Army Citadel, built 1967 by Ernest T. Lipscombe. Circular church building with a plaque which says “Opened April 29th 1967 by The General Frederick Coutts in commemoration of the Salvation Army Centenary 1865-1965
Prudential Building, Locally listed
Secrets Night Club was in a public house which had been originally at the junction of Mawney Road – which is now Angel Way - and High Street. It was called the Woolpack but was later The Angel. There was an Angel pub in the High Street in 1488. Not clear if this was the same site. The pub had a plaque on it saying that Edward Ind of the Brewery had once lived there.

Junction Road
The junction referred to being the railway which divides just at the end of the road

Kingsmead Avenue
Kingsmead Mansions, Locally listed mansion flats
Pump house Locally listed

Market Link
McClusky’s Bar
15 Church House. 15th house with 19th alterations. Plaque between 1st floor windows with armorial bearing. Has original timber beams inside. It is built to open out onto the churchyard so it could have been a merchant's house - the jutting upper floor was originally over the street. It was bought by the church in 1480 as a house for the chantry priest but sold after the reformation in 1548. It was altered in the c16, when it became the Cock and Bell Inn which was licensed in 1600... In the 19th it became an inn called the Cock and Bell? It was also called the Chequers for a while. Then during the 19th it was bought by local brewers Ind Coope and in 1908 they surrendered the licence and sold it to New College, Oxford, and it was renamed Church House.

Market Place
Market. Romford has a spacious Market Place, 365 ft long and 50 ft wide. Until 1933 the courthouse and gaol remained. It has a charter from Henry III and a market every Wednesday. Originally it was a livestock market and in the 15th it was a centre for the leather trade. Eventually it became a centre selling fruit and vegetables, farm tools and clothing. In 1892 the Local Board, bought it and it still owned and managed by Havering Council. It is here that there were stories of 19th wife auctions. 3 Windmill & Bells, pub closed in 1906 and stood on the north side
33 early 18th
5 Lamb Pub. Rebuilt in 1852-3 in the 16th it was a coaching inn and later owed by Ind Coope. Plain with two pedimented gables
60-72 Debenham’s. this was originally L F Stone’s Department Store opened in 1864 by Denny Stone and was taken over by Debenhams in 1960 who replaced the frontage which is ‘domineering; with a monotonous length and blank façade.
74-76 The Bull Hotel. Locally listed, it dates from at least 1630. Rebuilt in the 1880s.
9-13, a former bank
Barclays Bank. This was the site of the installation of the first “automatic teller machine” – a cash point in the wall, in June 1967. A plaque about this was unveiled by the Mayor in 1992
Boots Chemist. Locally listed
St Edward’s (C.E.) Schools. Founded as a charity school in 1711, with new buildings erected in Market Place 1728. It housed the Library from 1930 until it was replaced in the 1960s. The school had been built in 1728 with a 1733 school masters’ house to one side of it. It layer became known as St.Edward’s National School. It included on the frontage figures of a boy and girl, now preserved in the successor school. Demolished in 1968.
Churchyard 15th.
Duke of Wellington. Demolished 1967 and was on the site of a Littlewoods Department store. It had previously been called the 'Blucher's Head Inn' was, but was re-named due to anti-German feeling in the First World War.
HSBC. The building was originally by W. E.Westgate in 1905 in brick and bath stone, for L.F. Makins, grocer, and his badge is still on the building. Next to the Lamb
Kings Arms. This was another ancient building which lost its licence in about 1889, allegedly because its patrons' behaviour.
King's Head Inn. A Victorian rebuild of an original of 1714. Replaced by Boots the Chemist.
King's Hall, behind the Kings Head a popular dance venue north side.
Littlewoods Department Store. Opened in the 1960s and closed 2006.
Macarthy's mineral water factory. This was here in 1856 as the extension of a pharmacy which had been here since 1823. It was steam powered and remained in place until the late 1930s.
Market Hall. Replica of a three storey traditional 'market hall' with an open, arcaded ground floor. Re-instates the enclosed space of the market at the eastern end. Flats by Maslin Herman Brenshaw Partnership had been built above the shops to replace the 1930s covered market.
Pig in the Pound, formerly known as the Queen and Crown. This building is now Sadie’s dress shop.
Quadrant Arcade. 1930s ‘moderne’ detailing with some original doors inside. It has a ‘race-track’ roof-light and a clock at the Market Place entrance. It reflects the surge of residential development in the 1930s. It was opened in 1935 after the Council agreed to pay for the demolition of the old Council office building at the market entrance. Was bombed in the Second World War.
Queen's Head. A coaching inn, which was supposed to be part of the Bethnal Green legend of the Blind Beggar.
Rumford Shopping Hall was built in 1932 for undercover, traffic-free shopping. Locally listed
St.Edward the Confessor Church. This is a church built in a new village when the centre had moved to higher ground because of floods from the Rom. The church replaced the earlier chapel of St Edward the Confessor consecrated in 1410. It was built in 1849 by John Simson on the site of the old church in Kentish rag with Bath-stone re-using some of the stone from the old church on the site together with stone from John Nash's elegant Quadrant in Regent Street It has an embattled tower with a 162 ft spire with a clock and eight bells. Monument to Sir Anthony Cooke tutor to Edward VI, 576, and his six children Plans for a new church at the other end of the market place could not get funding.
25-29 T.J. Hughes, 1960 by North & Partners, department store with textured-tile facing.
The Dolphin coaching inn stood on the site of the C&A Department Store. North side. This pub was built in 1630 with a galleried yard and extensive stables. It was demolished in 1900.
Market superintendents offices were built on the site of an old tannery from the 17th, demolished in 1970s. Remains of a tannery pond were found here at the east end of the market
White Swan', partly dating from 1594, the name is commemorated in Swan Walk. It stood on the north side. The walk goes through the site of where the pub stood.

Mawney Road
The southern part was renamed Angel Way after the ring road was built.

Mercury Gardens
Premier Inn including the Liberty Bell Restaurant
The Mall Romford. Shopping Mall originally called Liberty II. Opened 2006 and includes a Mecca Bingo. Liberty Two itself was opened in 1990

Moss Lane
An unadopted footway between houses which may/may not be an ancient east/west road

North Street
The main route from Romford to Havering-atte-Bower and Collier Row. Once called Collier Row Lane.
36-38 Buddha Lounge – previously this was Opium Lounge
37-39 Wedding Gallery Locally listed

Romford
Romford was the site of a station on Roman Hare Street. It is recorded as ‘Romfort’ in 1177 which means the 'the wide ford'. The river ‘Rom’ is called that only for the middle stretch of the river and this is of course where the Roman road to Colchester from London crossed it.

Railway
The station was surrounded by sidings and goods areas.  This was partly to deal with the brewery traffic and also sidings to the east including cattle facilties. The lower goods line was reached by a difficult incline and wagons would be assembled before being taken through a tunnel onto the brewery premises.

Shaftesbury Road
The Manor Primary School. This was Albert Road School and moved here in 1979.

South Street
This was once called Hornchurch Lane. It was widened in the 1930s and took precedence over the High Street as the principal commercial street from that time.
1-3 Co-op bank site was the 'Three Crowns Inn', a 16th century building demolished in 1878. North side
10 Nat West frontage in polished black and grey granite.
64 Brannigans. This pub is in what was the post office. Built in 1913 by the Office of Works, in Beaux Arts style. With a ‘crassly rebuilt’ ground floor.
73 Page, Calnan & Co., former premises of timber merchants. Now a restaurant. Deco style, c. 1933 with mosaic work on the parapet. Locally listed
72-74 Bar Mango. This used to be the Global Café. On the corner of Arcade Place. Also called The Custom House pub
76 Lloyds TSB in red brick and Bath with stone lotus leaf columns, and acanthus leaf moulding
87-89 Yates Wine Lodge
95 Locally listed
97-101 Locally listed
99 The Moon and Stars. Wetherspoons pub opened in 1994.
103-111 Locally listed
105 Edwards Pub
108 Night Clubs Time and Envy were built as the Havana Cinema in 1936. It has a slick exterior with slots in the side of a slab tower by architects Leslie H. Kemp and F.E. Tasker and it was built for Victory Super Cinemas Ltd. And it became part of Eastern Cinemas Ltd. in 1937. It had a café and a Compton 3Manual/8Rank organ installed in 1936 January with Melotone variation + Diaphone. It was taken over by Odeon Theatres chain in 1943 and it re-named Odeon in 1949. It had three screens from 1974. It closed in 1990 and became a Lazerquest centre but was then closed apart from a dance studio in the old cafe. It opened as nightclubs in 1999
110 Locally listed
112-116 Kingsley Furniture, the former Times Furnishing Warehouse of 1936 in moderne style. the company’s logo, above the parapet. Locally listed
113 The World’s End which was once the Hogshead, Wetherspoons pub
131 The Life bar. This is in the old gas company showroom and offices built in 1937. Doorways with acanthus leaf decoration. For a while this pub was called Jumpin’ Jaks. Locally listed.
141 Trax Bar, next door to the Goose Pub. This was once a railway station, terminus of the line to Upminster, Grays and Tilbury, and opened in 1893, closing in 1932. After that Passengers had to use the booking office over the street and then cross by a footbridge to the platform.
143 The Goose pub. Previously this was Rising Sun and at another time the Moreland Arms
180 ABC Cinema. Built for ABC and designed by William R. Glen as the Ritz. It opened in 1938.It also staged live shows including the Beatles in the 1960s. It was re-named ABC in 1962 and became their first English cinema to have three screens. It was managed by Cannon for a period and eventually closed in 1999. There is now housing on the site.
230-268 Locally listed
270 The Old Oak. On the corner of Brentwood Road
222 Brickyard Bar and Grill
Barclays Bank on the site of Romford Hall which was also known as Stewards
Crossing between the former LMS and LNER stations - a Westwood Baillie boarded bridge with the broken remains of a cast iron lamppost. This lamppost was broken about four feet from the ground
Congregational Church demolished in 1970s. Carlisle Institute halls behind. Carlile was a quarrelsome previous minister
Gas showrooms. the original showrooms were next to the Havana cinema site but replace in 1937. The building is now a restaurant.
Universal Music Operations
Plaza Super Cinema. This opened in 1930 and was built for Victory Super Cinemas Ltd. It had a narrow street frontage and the auditorium was behind other buildings. Had a stage and dressing rooms. There was a Compton 2Manual/6Ranks theatre organ. It was renamed Plaza by Eastern Cinemas Ltd; in 1943, was taken over by Oscar Deutsch's Odeon Theatres Ltd and by Rank in 1948, who named it Gaumont. It closed in 1962 and the site is under the Liberty Shopping Centre mp- its entrance remains in Stewards Walk
Police Station relocated to Main Road in 1965
Capital Bus, Private bus garage. Here a worker went down into the pit when smoking and blew it up and two were killed
Quadrant Arcade 1935 an L-plan arcade linking South Street and Market Place behind the street frontages, with a ballroom on the upper floors. Cheap Art Deco in brick. A good horizontal roof light with curved mouldings survives inside. Typical of the low quality of frontages along the rest of the street. The dance hall was the Shannon and also opened onto the Market Place.
Romford Station. 1839. On the line between Gidea Park and Chadwell Heath on One Railway. It is also the terminus of One Railway from Emerson Park. Built by the Eastern Counties Railway. The Earliest station was a temporary one called ‘Barrack Lane’. A proper station was built later by Ashmole and the island platforms were on the site of present station. In 1840 the line was extended to Brentford and in 1860 it was rebuilt. In 1892 the London Tilbury and Southend Station for the line to Grays was built with a three storey building on the other side of South Street but it was then added to the ECR station. In 1931 it was rebuilt again when tracks were quadrupled to Gidea Park Line. Continued through the Manor of Stewards to the East-connecting tunnel to the brewery underneath. There were Girder bridges over the Rom into the brewery
Romford Canal - the never built terminus would have been in the vicinity of Romford Station.
Stewards Walk, with clock tower, is a mock-Victorian arcade of the 1980s following the line of the 1930s Romford Arcade.

Stewards Walk
Stewards was the name of the old Romford Hall, The estate went from South Street up to Balgores Lane and the Drill Corner in Gidea Park. It was owed by the Quarles family. Francis Quarles a poet lived there as a child. The house stood in a large park which became farmland. The house was a substantial building and from 1700 used as an Independent meeting house. It was demolished in 1717 and Romford Hall was built on the site. In 1839 The Eastern Counties Railway cut the estate in two and in 1851 the Manor was redeveloped as Western and Eastern Roads.
The entrance here to Liberty is the old entrance to the Gaumont Cinema. The canopy and clock were added in the 1990s

St Edward’s Way
Built in 1971 as Part of the Romford Ring Road,

Swan Walk
Commemorates the White Swan, pub which was in the Market Place

The Battis
A long passage way and footpath alongside the railway and through arches which at one time was the only way of getting between the hospital and the railway.

The Liberty
Liberty 1 Shopping Centre built 1871 on the site of Stewards House. There are over 100 shops and the Kings Head Inn, was moved here. This was a redevelopment of 1967-72 by Bernard Engle & Partners to create a precinct behind South Street and Market Place, along with the ring road. The planned open precinct has been enclosed as a curved mall beneath a glass roof supported on tree-like columns, which was done in 2002-3 by Chapman Taylor and Partners with Arup as structural engineers.
Odeon Cinema with eight screens opened in 1990 and closed in 2001.

Victoria Road
90 Royal Oak. This was on the corner with George Street and demolished when the ring road was built.
Old Mill Parade, Locally listed. A big interwar shopping parade of a type seen all over the suburbs. On the site of the Victoria Mills
Victoria steam flour mill opened in 1851, as part of the 17th post mill in South Street and known as the Star mill. The steam plant was needed because the railway embankment cut off the wind. It closed c.1928
Station Parade, Locally listed
The Victoria pub
92 Havering Learning Disability Society. Locally listed. This is in an old Primitive Methodist chapel. The church opened about 1873, and a permanent building erected in 1875. This was bombed but rebuilt in 1950, and closed in 1966.
165-167 Locally listed
169-171 Locally listed
LTSR Freight yard opened here in 1896.

Waterloo Road
1-15 The Brewery. Vue Cinema opened by Ster Century in 2001.talen over by Vue in 2005.

Western Road
United Reformed Church. 1965. Polygonal, red brick, spirelet lantern.
62-72 Locally listed

Wheatsheaf Road
The Wheatsheaf. Locally listed

Sources
Brennand. Ilford to Shenfield
Cinema Treasures. Web site
Clifford Dance Studios.  Web site
Essex Journal
Evans. Romford
Evans. Romford Heritage
Evans. Romford. A History
Glazier.  London Bus garages
GLIAS Newsletter
Havering Learning Disability Society. Web site
Ind Coope.  My visit to Romford Brewery
James. Chemical Industry in Essex
London Borough of Havering. Web site
Nairn. Modern Buildings
Peaty. Brewery Railways
Pevsner and Cherry. Essex,
Romford and District Synagogue. Web site
Salvation Army. Web site
St.Edward the Confessor. Web site
The Manor Primary School. Web site
Trinity Methodist church. Web site
Victoria County History. Romford

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