Old School

A Memory of Corringham.

If you head down Lampits Hill and carry on past Giffords Cross road on your right, you then enter Church Road, the next road on your left is Fobbing Road. Opposite this junction is a building called the Old School House, this was the original school for Corringham long before Herd Lane (Corringham Primary) was built. I lived in Pump House, which is on the corner of Church Road/Fobbing Road from 1958 to 1966 as it belonged to my parents who came to Corringham from Kent in 1944, and took over the shop from my father's aunt Florence Dane (hence Danes Corner). As I recall, there was a church/village hall next to the site of the petrol station in Lampits Hill, then owned by Alec Monk, it is still owned and run by the same family today.
In those days, the Manorway used to turn up Rookery hill into Church Road and all the traffic going to the refinery came this way and mostly went up Lampits Hill. I can remember, as a small boy, watching Pickfords trying to move abnormal loads through the village with big Ccammell tractors at each end of a giant trailer, the police would stop traffic and men with poles would be walking alongside lifting telephone and electricity cables to allow the load to pass. I can remember the old Corringham fire station in Fobbing Road very well, my 'aunty Win' had taken us to the park (I was probably about 3) when I slipped her hand and ran to the fire station where I found a large oil drip tray, wearing only light blue sandles and matching short trousered bib and braces I ventured in (you can see where this is going). Needless to say the clothing went in the bin and I went in the bath!
As for a fire station in Stanford, I do believe there was, I'm convinced it was in Southend Road where it meets the High Street roughly where Stanford library now stands, but I cannot be sure.
I have many happy memories of Corringham and Stanford, of Herd Lane School and Gable Hall, I still live here, as do many of the people I grew up with, but as time goes by things change, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but as always it's never the same.

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