Life Around St Nicholas Church

St Nicholas's Church c1955
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When we were children we used to toboggan down St Nicholas Hill in snowy weather, which was wonderfully exciting as it is so steep. I was married in St Nicholas Church on 25th July 1959 which was an exceptionally hot day, temperature about 90F. My husband's grandmother lived in one of the council houses at the bottom of the hill, just over the road in Markham's Chase. His mother and father lived in a bungalow in Church Drive, at the foot of the hill. This was an unmade road and they were not connected to the sewer but had to have a chemical toilet which was emptied regularly into pits in their quite large garden. They did not have a bathroom and weekly baths were held in front of the fire in the living room in a large tin bath, which involved much work in boiling the water and filling the bath, not to mention the trouble of emptying it! Their bungalow had been the subject of a compulsory purchase order by Basildon Corporation in about 1957 or 58 and the area is now so built up as to be unrecognisable, although the road from Laindon at the foot of the church hill into Basildon follows the route of the old Church Drive. The area then was very rural with fields all round and most of the houses in that area were wooden bungalows with large gardens. Children had a wonderful time with few restrictions as to where they wandered. Once away from the High Road, most roads in Laindon were unmade and used to get very muddy in the winter, with people putting out the ashes and cinders from their fires tomake paths.