IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Gooshays Drive, ROMFORD, RM3 9SU

On the right, a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses. On the left, an anonymous building with rather weedy surrounds. This is the Harold Hill and District Affiliated Synagogue.

The grass area has now been built on.

Not literally my place, as this is the name of a Big Lottery funded state of the art youth centre with dance and music space, a recording studio, a bike workshop, a computer suite, a juice bar and café and a crèche. The London Borough of Havering were awarded £4,704,492 in funding to achieve the project. The photographer finds it somewhat amusing that it is such a precise figure. Woe betide the construction management team if it had cost £4,704,493. Mr Micawber would have been predicting misery...

Henry the 8th stands beside a policeman and some other character beside this roundabout in Central Park. On the London Loop path.

On the corner of Guildford Road.

Central Park is found in Gooshayes Ward of Harold Hill. The name probably comes from Geoffrey Goshaye who cleared the woodland and enclosed the new arable land in the late 12th century. The literal meaning of Gooshayes is 'goose enclosure'. The house at Gooshayes was rebuilt during the reign of Charles II. In front of the brick-built manor house lay terraced gardens, at the bottom of which were two horse-shoe ponds which were medieval in origin. Beyond the ponds ran Payne's Brook. By the late 18th century, the original manor house was in ruins, replaced by a Georgian farmhouse, partly constructed from the remains. All that remained of the house in 1800 were the foundations, the terraced garden and the two fishponds. After the Second World War the farmhouse and the barn were to have been preserved. The 18th century barn, having been described as "the largest of its type in Essex", suffered the elements, neglect and constant attack by vandals, and was destroyed by fire in 1958. The farm's final use was as a community centre but was demolished in 1961. The figures here are King Henry VIIIth, Harry Norman Eccleston OBE, the Bank of England's first full-time banknote designer who lived nearby, and Dick Bouchard MBE, the founder of the Romford Drum and Trumpet Corps. For the reason these three were chosen see https://www3.havering.gov.uk/Pages/ServiceChild/CentralPark-LGSL-823.aspx

On the London Loop between Harold Wood and Havering-atte-Bower.

'Harold Hill Ambitions - Community Voices' is the slightly enigmatic theme of the illustration, which features mainly an elderly group bowling. This appears unrelated to the development, which replaced a comfortably spaced out residential area with small greens with higher density housing with no shared grass.