Grays Thurrock Essex England Uk 1935 1953

A Memory of Grays.

My memories of Grays go back to the 1940's and 1950's the war years and before the London over-spill estates Of Belhurst Park and Basildon arrived. I was born and lived at 106 Bridge Road with my parents Thomas and Hilda Gosnall and my brother John Thomas and sister Jeanette Kathleen. My parents were married on the 9th June 1934 at London Road Methodist Church which was just along the London Road from the police station and war memorial shown in the photo above and out of view of the camera. It is no more having been knocked down and replaced by Morrison's Super Market. I went to Arthur Street Primary/Junior School.

In the infants school I remember my teacher was Miss Parfitt. In the afternoon we laid out our beds (they were a bit like stretchers) and the handles rested in two wooden blocks. Our headmistress was Miss Walsham. Brick air-raid shelters stood around the playground.

I also have a vague recollection of attending school for a time in a house next to my Aunt Annies in Bridge Road on the corner of East Thurrock Road.

When I was about 7/8 we went up into the Junior School. We spent time in the air-raid shelters when we did a lot of singing and learned our times tables by reciting them in chorus in the dark!

One winter it was so cold that we were sent out to play in the playground because it was warmer than the class-room. There was snow and ice on the ground and we created a huge slide across the playground. And we became quite good at skimming over the ice in our shoes one after another in a long Que.

We watched troop convoys pass our school going down Gypsy Lane into Tilbury Docks over a special bridge constructed over the railway which we knew as Jumbo Bridge because it looked a bit like an elephant without a trunk. The convoys increased a lot during 1944 as the troops went back to Europe on D/Day.

I also remember the Exmouth Swimming baths and its wooden construction they belonged to the training ship that used to be moored in the Thames and there was a causeway from the river up to the baths.

A path ran along the top of the sea wall which after the war we would cycle along to the Dock and watch the ships going in and out of the dock if the tide was right. There were two large dry docks outside the dock-yard that were specially built during WWII and where part of the pontoons for the D-Day Landing were constructed.

The beach such as it was had been constructed by a business man who had it dug out and sand imported.

Coal for the co-op bakery which was at the bottom of Sherfield Road came into a dock and was unloaded by a crane into a hopper which then filled small trucks on a pulley system that tipped the coal out to the ground below inside the grounds of the Bakery..

Soldiers during 1943-44 were camped out on the fields in Bell tents behind the seawall.

My brother and I were in the cubs and later the scouts and attended Sunday School at London Road Methodist Church which was very and built around 1880's The church was accessed from the pavement by two flights of stairs up to its entrance. Beneath the church were the meeting rooms for the Sunday School, Cubs Scouts Brownies and Guides. On a Monday afternoon The Sisterhood met in the main School Room. My father was a Trustee of the church and a Methodist Local Preacher.

Behind the church stood the State Cinema which still stands in 2014 in George Street opposite where the General Post Office once stood, sadly it is also slowly progressing through neglect and decay into dilapidation.

To the right of the foreground in this picture is the Queens Hotel which runs round the corner into Clarence Road along Clarence Road and about 300 yards from its entry into the High Street was a back passageway to shops and houses at the far end stood the headquarters of the Grays Division of the St John Ambulance Brigade which basically was a very large corrugated steel hut. I became a cadet and met the for classes from 1946 to 1953.

At the opposite end of the High Street from that shown in the photo above stood Grays railway station which had a line to the west via Purfleet, Dagenham and Barking to Fenchurch Street Railway Terminus the down line from Fenchurch Street Rail terminus ran via Grays to Tilbury, Tilbury Ferry, Stanford-le-Hope, to Southend-on-Sea. A branch line ran from the bay platform at Grays to and from Upminster via Ockendon.

Through the railway level crossing was the Central Property and offices of the Grays Co-operative Society they also had Boot and Drapery Shops in the High Street. On past the Co-op was Boatman's the jewellers with it prominent Clock hanging out over the pavement and a little further and on the right is the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul from where the Christian Faith has been set for around 1000 Years.

Running East from the church was New Road which ran parallel with the railway line to
its junction with Bridge Road.

Across the road from the Church the town market would operate and a little further south it ran into the old High Street with its quaint wooden houses and shops now all gone.