The History of Romford Town Centre

Romford is older than almost anything now standing in it. This page traces the town from a river crossing on the road out of London to the ring-roaded shopping centre of today, and it does so from one source in particular: the History & Heritage Assessment prepared for the Romford Town Centre Masterplan by heritage consultant Robert Bevan of Authentic Futures, dated October 2020 and published by Havering Council as part of the masterplan evidence base. Page references throughout are to that report.

It is worth reading for one reason above all. Most local history is written building by building. This report is written morphologically — it asks what shape the town has taken, and why the shape keeps changing. That turns out to explain rather more about Cotleigh Road than any account of individual houses would.

The ford, and the name#

The road from London ran north-east through the forest of eastern England and after some ten miles had to cross a ford in the River Rom. Hence Romford (p. 6). The Roman settlement of Durolitum was once nearby.

The river was broader then, before it was controlled and water extracted, and the report suggests an at-least-seasonal lagoon may have existed near today's market place. The first prehistoric settlement is thought to have been at Marshalls, on higher ground behind today's library and town hall. The crossing of the river on a gravel terrace some fifty feet above sea level "persisted as Romford's basic form for centuries" (p. 6).

Two St Andrews, six hundred years apart#

The first building mentioned in the record is a chapel of St Andrew, dated 1177 and abandoned before 1410, which stood by the junction of Oldchurch Road and South Street (p. 6). The nucleus of Romford — or a separate settlement entirely — may once have been there.

It was the chapel of St Edward that came to dominate. The old St Andrew's chapel fell into ruin in the late 1300s and was replaced by a new church on the market, completed in 1410 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St Edward the Confessor.

This matters for reading the modern street names. The St Andrew's Church that stands on St Andrew's Road today is not a survival of that medieval chapel. It is a Victorian building of 1862, six centuries younger and half a mile away, and how it came to be there is the part of this history that runs directly through Cotleigh Road.

The barracks: where this street comes from#

For centuries Romford grew linearly, along what are now London Road, High Street, Market Place and Main Road, with the wide Market Place as its focus (p. 43). Expansion meant intensification along those four arms — not new districts.

The first real exception is the one that concerns us:

The still linear town's first notable expansion was the Napoleonic War-era barrack ground off London Road that covered 12 acres towards the later line of the railway and which was subsequently developed as New Romford, some 200 cottages with two or more factories. The site today is the estate off Waterloo Road. (p. 11)

That is the origin of this neighbourhood, stated in one sentence. A Napoleonic barrack ground of twelve acres, decommissioned, then built over with around 200 cottages and a factory or two, under the name New Romford. The estate off Waterloo Road is the Waterloo Estate — the land along the western boundary of Cotleigh Road, now being redeveloped.

The barracks appear on the 1805 Ordnance Survey map, labelled simply Barracks, south-west of the town, at the point where London Road met what is now Waterloo Road (pp. 9–10). By the 1848 Gotto map there is already "development on the site of the former barracks to the south west of the centre" (p. 12).

The industry followed. Among Romford's central industries the report lists tanneries, candle production, a mineral factory, and "a comb factory near the Old Barrack Ground by Waterloo Road" (p. 18).

And then the church:

As well as the Roman Catholic church mentioned above, the Church of St Andrew was erected in 1862 on the former barrack ground by Waterloo Road. Non-conformist places of worship also included an Independent Church on North Street, the Baptist Salem church on London Road. (p. 20)

So St Andrew's Church stands on the old barrack ground. The dedication reaches back to that vanished medieval chapel at Oldchurch, but the building is a church for a new industrial suburb, put up on demilitarised land for the people in the 200 cottages.

What the 1938 map shows#

Cotleigh Road itself is not discussed anywhere in the report's text. It is, however, drawn and named on the 1938 Ordnance Survey extract reproduced on page 28, sitting in the grid between Honiton Road and Queen Street, a short walk from St Andrew's Road and Waterloo Road. By 1938 the street exists, fully built, in the form it broadly holds today.

The 1873 second-edition OS map on page 15 shows the stage before that: the town expanding, "the area west of Waterloo Road" building up, and — bottom left of the same sheet — Cottons, the land that is now Cottons Park.

The two listed buildings on our doorstep#

Both are Grade II, and both are minutes from Cotleigh Road. The report gives their list descriptions in full (p. 51).

Church of St Andrew, St Andrews Road — 1862 by John Johnson, the same architect who rebuilt the parish church of St Edward. Ragstone, comprising nave, chancel and south aisle. Windows mostly small and of two lights with Decorated tracery. A large west window above three small circular windows. West tower inside the gable with battered plinth and angle buttresses. Shingled broach spire; stone turret with hexagonal cap with ball-flower ornament. Prominent south porch, ornamental slate roof with decorated red ridge-tiles, octagonal vestry to the north-east.

Salem Chapel, London Road — 1847, from a date plaque on the building. A Baptist chapel in stock brick, its principal elevation to London Road three bays wide and two storeys high. A projecting central bay with stucco quoins and a wide central doorway with stucco pilasters. Most striking are the Egyptian windows on the upper floor, with hoods on tapering brackets — a touch of the Egyptian Revival on a Romford back road. The return elevation to St Andrews Road runs three bays with segmental-headed windows in recessed panels. Original cast-iron railings, standards and gates by Wedlake Thompson of Hornchurch. A lecture room was added in 1868.

Nearby and locally listed is The Prince Albert public house on St Andrews Road, built as housing in 1842 and described as "a good example of an early Victorian building, surviving in an area which has seen a large amount of modern housing development" (p. 78).

New Romford is treated as a heritage cluster#

This is the report's most directly relevant judgement for anyone living here. Under the heading Beyond the Town Centre it identifies the assets that survive outside the centre proper:

Chief among these are what remains of the New Romford area developed on the former barracks site from the early 19th century. These include St Andrews and The Prince Albert and, on London Road, The Sun pub, the Salem Chapel and the neighbouring row of cottages. (p. 81)

These buildings are not read as isolated survivals but as a group — the remnant of the barrack-ground suburb. The report returns to them in its recommendations, arguing for "the reconnection of High Street with what remains of New Romford", where "a cluster of heritage assets and well designed buildings on and near London Road such as the Salem Chapel and Sun pub could be re-integrated with the town centre" (p. 94). It warns in the same breath that "large-scale proposals in these locations threaten to overwhelm these assets and their potential group value", and captions a photograph of the group: "The cluster of assets including St Andrews at New Romford. These survive amid redevelopment" (p. 95).

That is a heritage consultant, writing for the council, flagging the risk that development around Cotleigh Road could swamp the very buildings that explain why the neighbourhood exists.

The town that kept demolishing itself#

The wider story is one of repeated, deliberate reinvention — which is context worth having before reading any claim that the current regeneration is unprecedented.

The railway, 1839. The Eastern Counties line arrived and was "the tipping point for rapid change", with Romford's population jumping from 5,317 to almost 14,000 by 1901, then to more than 40,000 between the wars (p. 11). The station's position on South Street pulled the town's growth southward. A second station opened in 1893; the two were amalgamated in 1934.

The Victorian market. The Market Place developed to about 400 by 50 metres, with large areas given to cattle — one of the largest cattle markets near London. It remained significant until shortly after the Second World War and finally closed in 1958 (p. 10). From at least the 18th century until 1933, a Market House stood at the western end, holding a courtroom, a gaol and the official measures for weighing goods.

The Georgian erasure. Bluntly put by the report: "Romford has lost almost its entire collection of Georgian buildings including many frontages on the north side of Market Place" (p. 10).

Between the wars. Population went from 19,442 in 1921 to 35,918 in 1931 (p. 26). Romford became a municipal borough and its town hall opened in

1. The Quadrant Arcade was built from 1934 in Art Deco, "glitteringly

lit in green and gold neon", and completed in 1935 by demolishing Market Place buildings including the historic Market House (p. 27). The Havana cinema on South Street opened in 1936 to a design by the cinema architects Kemp & Tasker, later becoming the Odeon. Four cinemas were operating in Romford by 1951.

After the war. Population rose from 88,000 in 1951 to more than 114,000 a decade later, and in 1965 Romford was united with Hornchurch Urban District to form the London Borough of Havering (p. 30). Then came the change that shaped the town centre you see now: 1960s comprehensive clearance, an encircling ring road, and "the rebuilding of virtually all the town centre, emptying out much of the residential population". Laurie Square and Laurie Hall were demolished for St Edward's Way. The market was closed to through traffic by 1969, when it still had some 300 regular stallholders. The open-air Liberty Shopping Centre was begun in 1968 and completed in 1972 with over 100 shops (p. 31).

Why the shape of the town matters#

The report's summary of morphological change (pp. 43–44) is the passage that best explains the place. Romford's crossroads divided it into four quarters which, for hundreds of years, "remained largely open land". Expansion happened along the four main routes, or in satellite developments — "such as New Romford".

Two of those quarters stayed empty remarkably late. The south-western quadrant was occupied by the brewery, "an impermeable industrial enclave" of 20 acres and around 1,000 workers by 1970. And "remarkably, the south-eastern quadrant between Market Place and Western Road remained a green hinterland for centuries up until the radical redevelopments of the 1960s".

The report is unsentimental about what followed:

This large-scale reordering of Romford threw a ring of traffic around the quadrants and crossroads, severing the outer areas from the town's centre. (p. 43)

And it names the loss precisely. For most of its existence Romford "had a medieval appearance with many timber-framed buildings with weatherboard and gables — very much the pattern of rural Essex". The Victorian age transformed its face; the interwar period turned it "from a distinct Essex market town with a still active agricultural hinterland to a Metroland extension of London"; and the 1960s completed the change, "turning the town centre into a mono-cultural zone devoted almost exclusively to shopping" (p. 44).

The lack of greenery in central Romford, the report notes, "is only a phenomenon of recent decades. For many centuries, inner Romford was immensely green" (p. 95).

What this means for Cotleigh Road#

Four things follow, and they are the reason this page exists.

The neighbourhood is a satellite, not an extension. New Romford was built as a distinct settlement on decommissioned military land, separate from the linear town. That separateness was later hardened by the ring road, which "severed the outer areas from the town's centre" — and undoing it is an explicit aim of the current masterplan.

The listed buildings nearby are a group, not a scatter. St Andrew's, Salem Chapel, the Prince Albert and the Sun are what remains of the barrack-ground suburb. Their value is partly in being read together, which is precisely what the report says is at risk.

Romford has rebuilt itself roughly every two generations. Barracks to cottages, market town to railway suburb, suburb to Metroland, Metroland to ring road and shopping centre. The Waterloo Estate regeneration is the latest in a long sequence, not a departure from a settled past.

The green space is not a given. Cottons Park appears on the 1873 map as Cottons. Central Romford's greenery was lost within living memory, and the report treats its return as an opportunity rather than a restoration.

Source#

Robert Bevan, Romford Town Centre: History & Heritage Assessment, Authentic Futures, October 2020 — prepared as baseline evidence for the Romford Town Centre Masterplan SPD and published by the London Borough of Havering (document 08.2.1). All quotations are its author's words.

Read the full report (PDF, 105 pages) on Havering Council's committee-documents site.

Every page reference on this page is a link. Each one opens the council's copy of the PDF at that page, and hovering it shows the page itself, so a claim can be checked without leaving the paragraph it appears in.

Those previews are images of the cited pages, held here because council document portals move and a citation that resolves to nothing is no better than no citation. They are reproduced under the report's attribution for the narrow purpose of evidencing what is quoted. The report is © Authentic Futures, its historic maps and photographs are third-party material — the 1805 Ordnance Survey extract is credited to Havering Libraries Local Studies — and none of that imagery is reproduced anywhere else on this site.

Related reading on this site: the history of Cotleigh Road itself, the Romford Town Centre Masterplan that this report underpins, and the Waterloo Estate regeneration now building on the old barrack ground.