Hornchurch, Wingletye Lane, Photograph C.1950

A Memory of Hornchurch.

I lived in Glanville Drive, a residential road off Upminster Road about 100 yards to the west of Wingletye Lane, for the first part of my life from 1947 so I knew the area well.

The building on the corner of Wingletye Lane and Upminster Road is 'Dury Falls', a Grade II Listed Building which I remember was being used as offices in the 1960s.

The strip of land planted with bushes on the left-hand side of the photograph had, I believe, been left undeveloped to protect the route of a planned main road from the A127 'Southend Arterial Road' to somewhere in the south of the county that was never built. There is a similar strip alongside Hacton Lane on the other side of Upminster Road. I only remember the strip as being grassed so the bushes must have been removed in the 1950s.

About 200 yards along Wingletye Lane on the right-hand side was Dury Falls Secondary School.

About 350 yards along Wingletye Lane is the bridge over the Romford-Upminster railway branch line. About 100 yards along the railway cutting to the west of the bridge is a Site of Special Scientific Interest which marks the southernmost extent, around 450,000 years ago, of ice during the ice ages.