To Rainham Mark, West Rainham, Lower Rainham,
East Rainham and back to Rainham proper
Deep inside the British Museum, half-way up a wide stone staircase, I managed to find my way to a very private looking door by the side of which was a bell-push minutely labelled 'Map Room'. The door was opened cautiously by a uniformed keeper. I filled in a form and read the instructions about the handling of the Museum's maps. Lack of time prevented me from looking at only two examples of what I had come to see - old maps of the Rainham area. Both were large scale Ordnance Survey maps, one surveyed in 1864/65 and the other revised in 1906. The earlier map showed that Rainham was little bigger than Lower Rainham in the 1860s. Apart from a few cottages in the lower part of what is now Station Road, its buildings were confined essentially to the main road through the village. More particularly, the earlier map showed, amongst other things, that Lower Rainham had a Weslyan Methodist Chapcl and two inns - the 'Jolly Gardeners' and the ‘Three Mariners'. The buildings shown as existing in Rainham at the time included the National School, St Margaret's Church, the railway station, an Independant Chapel, two farms and a Post Office. (No inns werc specifically identified on the map but three or four would have existed.)
The 1864/65 map also showed that far fewer orchards existed in the Rainham area than exist today. Presumably it was not until the coming of the railway that fruit farmers in the area had an economical way of distributing their produce through-out the country, thus enabling them to expand their output. Another reason would appear to be that many of today's orchards have been established relatively recently in disused brickfields, which have little other use, but which provide a sheltered environment for fruit trees.
The 1906 map showed that Lower Rainham had not grown much in the previous 40 years, whereas Rainham had roughly tripled in size (see sketch map below). The village now had three smithies, a recreation ground, three schools and seven churches or chapels – a place of worship for about every other street. It seemed that our Victorian predecessors were avid church and chapel goers. (As with the earlier map, public houses were not identified – with the exception of 'The Men of Kent’).
As part of our monthly ride Kemsley and I decided to try and establish whether certain buildings that we could identify in the two maps still existed. Our first port of call was near the bottom of Orchard Street. It appeared to us that the school on the 1906 map stood on the site now occupied by Kent Kandies. We concluded that it had probably been demolished but that it was not impossible that the building partly covered in corrugated iron and with two cowls on its roof was originally the school.
We then crossed the road to a building on the side of which was a painted wooden board with barely readable lettering. It stated 'A Kemsley and Son, Wheelwrights, Shoeing and Jobbing Smiths, Agricultural Engineers, (Sheet Metal?) Welders and Cutters'. The building used to house one of the three smithies mentioned on the 1906 map. We looked in through the windows. The forge and anvil were still there and the building was in use as a workshop. Our map indicated that the second smithy was in the red brick building known as the 'Rainham Forge' now demolished to make way for the new shopping centre. The third smithy - also now gone – was shown to have been in Station Road just below Macklands.
As we rode along the A2 towards Rainham Mark I was reminded that the 1906 map showed that the old tramway from Gillingham was laid just inside what were then fields but what is now part of the roadside verge, which looks so attractive in the Spring with its carpet of crocuses and daffodils. The tramway was shown as terminating at Berengrave Lane. It diverted into the middle of the road at Rainham Mark as it curved round the front of a number of cottages and a terrace called Victoria Cottages. None of those houses now existed.
Having ridden to Rainham Mark we doubled back a little and turned into Pump Lane. Beyond the railway bridge we entered the apple orchards and what was described in the 1964/65 Survey as West Rainham. It consisted of little more than what is now known as Pump Farm.
At the bottom of Pump Lane we passed an attractive half timbered building consisting of Chapel Cottage (c1450) and Chapel House (c1500). A lady from Chapel Cottage was fighting a losing battle against a swarm of bees which had been aroused by the sunny weather and which were exploring the many nooks and crannies of the old building. We turned right into Lower Rainham Road. The 1864/65 map showed two inns on the north side of the road. One of them, the ‘Jolly Gardeners’, is now a block of private houses. Its age (built c1450) is disguised under a coating of white pebble-dash. The next building along the road is The Old House, built cl550 and now a restaurant. Beyond that is the second inn mentioned in the 1864/65 map, and still in use as a public house, 'The Three Mariners'.
There would appear to have been no school in Lower Rainham when the 1864/65 survey was made and the village children presumably went to the National School at Rainham. If so they would have used the footpath that ran from the bottom of Bloors Lane to the centre of Rainham. (Kemsley wondered what their boots must have looked like by the time they got back home!) The 1906 map revealed that Lower Rainham had obtained its own small school by that date. It was situated almost opposite the 'Three Mariners'. We were sad to see, however, that it had been demolished although someone had had the presence to ensure that part of the school wall was retained as a boundary between the two houses which were built on the spot.
We noted that the Weslyan Methodist Chapel shown on the earlier map still stood - albeit as a store room. On the front of the building was a stone inscribed simply 'Chapel 1852'. Next to the Chapel, on the Eastern edge of Lower Rainham, partly hidden behind a number of holm (evergreen) oaks, we came to 542 Lower Rainham Road, better known as Bloors Place. This is a magnificent old farm house, with a walled garden (containing what appeared to be an ancient sweet chestnut tree) and some fine outbuildings - including a seven bay cart shed with a hay loft. The windmill shown on the 1906 map as standing at the back of the farm was clearly no longer there, whilst the pond shown at the entrance to the farm had been filled in and planted over with fruit trees.
To be continued