Rainham,Purfleet, Thurrock & Ponders End: On Saturday 11th December 1993 I took a train from Fenchurch Street to Rainham and then walked along by the river to Coldharbour Point. There the path stopped and I returned to Rainham and took the train to Purfleet where I could pick up the riverside path again and walk on to Grays. Probably I walked about 9 miles in all and by the time I finished it I think the light would have been fading, with sunset at around 4pm.
Tilda Rice, Rainham, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-64
On this walk I made a little over 200 black and white images, a selection of which you can find on Flickr in my 1993 London album beginning here.
Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-65
Waste Paper, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-51
There are more colour images from this walk, including a number of panoramas, mixed with pictures from other occasions starting here on the final two pages of my Flickr album of colour pictures from 1993.
Notices on Fence, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-53
But today I found some more pictures from that walk at the start of my album 1994 London Colour and I’ll share these in this post. They will have come from a cassette of film which I took in 1993 but only developed a month or so later in 1994.
Waste Paper, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-56
Works, Purfleet, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-46
QEII Bridge, Dartford Bridge, Pipeline, River Thames, West Thurrock, Thurrock, 1993, 94-01-1-11
The final image in today’s post is something completely different on the same film, a shop window in Ponders End which I found it strangely weird. As it is on the same film as the others I think it was probably also taken in December 1993 although my caption stated 1994.
Rainham and Hornchurch: On Thursday 11th May 2006 I put my Brompton folding bike on the train for the journey across London to Rainham Station. The journey, around 31 miles in a straight line, though rather longer on the ground, took me almost two hours on three trains, one Underground. As usual I took a book to read and relaxed on the journey.
Containers on Rainham Marshes
Rainham is in Havering, part of Greater London and is the last station out to the east on the C2C rail service where the Travelcard I used covered. I did several rides and walks from here into Essex over the years, but I on this one stayed inside Greater London.
Mural of previous industry in the area and Tilda Rice works
The first part of this bike ride followed the route of the London Loop path around the outskirts of London, which at that date came to a dead and desolate end at Coldharbour Point. The path now continues to end in Purfleet, and if you have the stamina you can continue walking on a riverside path which ends at Tilbury Docks before having to retrace your steps to Grays.
Derelict concrete barges in the Thames built for the Mulberry Harbour used for the D-Day landings
I didn’t write much about the ride back in 2006, and I didn’t ride very far. After returning from the end of the path I had a short ride west along the A13, which I don’t recommended as it is certainly not cycle friendly with much fast-moving traffic. The Mardyke Estate, where I went after that is now called ‘Orchard Village’ which at least avoids confusion with the Mardyke, a small river a few miles to the east. I continued roughly north through South Hornchurch, finally ending my ride at the District Line station of Elm Park.
The sculpture in the river facing the barges and the Tilda Rice plant is Diver: Regeneration by local sculptor John Kaufman, who died in 2002, not long after it was placed here in the mud in 2000. Some of the funding for it came from the landfill company which carried waste here to raise parts of the marshes above sea level.
Waste Transfer Jetty – Landfill is raising much of the below sea-level marshes
My pictures don’t reflect the nature of the area which has large areas of open with marshes and country parks and two rivers flowing through it, the Beam River and the Ingrebourne which flows into the Thames at Rainham Creek. I think it is also an area which has seen considerable regeneration since 2006 in the London Riverside area of Thames Gateway redevelopment.
Coldharbour Point and the barbed wire where the London Loop then ended
Here’s my account with the usual minor corrections from 2006:
Rainham is at the eastern edge of London, an area of marsh, industry, warehouses, container stacks, dereliction and landfill on the Essex (north) bank of the Thames, cut across by the elevated A13 trunk road which sweeps across the creek and on over the marshes to Purfleet, alongside the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
Rainham Creek from the A13
One day the Thames Path will continue past Coldharbour Point, but for the moment it’s a dead end. I eat my sandwiches and then turn back, making my way up onto the elevated roadway, but the views are disappointing.
Mardyke Estate, South Hornchurch
At the next roundabout west I take a look around, leave the main road and then head north, past disused areas of the Ford Dagenham site and up through the Mardyke Estate and South Hornchurch.
At Elm Park the heat of our first hot day if the year – 25 Celsius in the shade, but I’ve been constantly in sun – gets to me and I give up and take the Underground towards home.
One of many houses decorated for the Cup Final. Unfortunately West Ham lost to Liverpool
The heat has buckled some of the rails and the District Line train has to crawl along, more or less at my cycling speed, but at least I can just sit and rest.
