Tag Archives: drawing

Document of the Month, May 2015: 50th anniversary of the five Essex London Boroughs

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This month marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the 5 London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Havering, Redbridge, Newham and Waltham Forest in the metropolitan area of the ancient county of Essex.

To mark this anniversary, we have cheated slightly with Document of the Month and chosen images of those places when they were still part of Essex.

The old Court House or Market Hall or Old Town Hall at Barking was built and paid for by Elizabeth I.  By 1920 it had fallen into disrepair and was demolished in 1923.

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Dagenham will always be associated with Fords.  This photograph shows Edsel Ford cutting the first sod for the factory c. 1929.

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Havering was named for the ancient Royal Liberty of Havering-atte-Bower.  The Round House, Havering was built in 1792 for William Sheldon, a wealthy tea merchant, and was later home to Rev Joseph Pemberton who developed the hybrid musk rose in the 1900s.

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Newham was formed from the County Boroughs of West Ham and East Ham.  This illustration shows the Old Town Hall at Stratford, built in 1869.

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Redbridge was named for a bridge over the River Roding.  Situated in the Borough was the Fairlop Oak, an ancient place for fairs.  Its name continues in the Fairlop Waters Country Park.

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Vestry House, Walthamstow is where the Waltham Forest archives are held.  This watercolour is by A. B. Bamford and dates from 1926.

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Document of the Month, March 2015: Freehand plan of George Street, Old Moulsham, Chelmsford as it was c.1948

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By Jane Bedford, Archivist

Freehand plan of George Street, Old Moulsham, Chelmsford as it was c.1948 (Accession A13903)

This month’s document is the product of a remarkable feat of memory. It was drawn by Ms. Joan E. Atkins, more than half a century after almost all of the buildings in George Street were demolished in the 1950s. The area is now a car park and only two of the forty-three dwellings which once existed there have survived.

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Ms. Atkins’s drawing of George Streeet, Moulsham, as it was c.1948. Click for a larger version.

Ms. Atkins lived in George Street as a child, during and after the Second World War, until 1948, when her family moved. In April 2014, having searched unsuccessfully for photographs or images of the Street prior to the demolition, she decided to make her own sketch of it as it once was, because she felt it was ‘a great pity that nothing exists to give future generations an idea of George Street’s origins’. She drew on her childhood memories to produce the freehand sketch plan, and especially on her observations of the layout of the houses when accompanying her mother on weekly door-to-door collections for the Red Cross during the war years. She includes carefully-drawn frontal elevations of the buildings, which are reminiscent of those depicted on the maps of Chelmsford and Moulsham made by the pioneering map-maker John Walker in 1591.

A truly impressive achievement!

The sketch will be on display in the Searchroom throughout March 2015.

Movember: Miscellaneous moustaches

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We hope that you have had a happy Movember, and that you are now in a position to be able to consider how to style your carefully cultivated moustache.

Here is the final instalment of moustache inspiration from the archives, including everything that didn’t fit elsewhere. Remember you can also view inspiration from Essex’s historic sportsmen, firemen the military, and even the Victorian County Council.

Remember, our own ERO chaps are taking part in Movember themselves to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK, and you can find their Just Giving page here.