# The History of Romford Town Centre

*Category: The wider town*
*Topics: romford, history, heritage, urban planning, regeneration*

This page explores the history of Romford, a town in eastern England, from its origins as a river crossing to its current state as a ring-roaded shopping centre. The page is based on a heritage assessment report prepared for the Romford Town Centre Masterplan, which examines the town's morphological changes over time. The report highlights the town's repeated reinvention, including the loss of its Georgian buildings, the development of new suburbs, and the impact of the railway and ring road on its growth. The page also discusses the significance of the New Romford area, which was developed on the site of a former barracks, and the importance of preserving the town's heritage assets.

## Key points

- Romford's history dates back to a river crossing on the road out of London
- The town has undergone repeated reinvention, including the loss of its Georgian buildings
- The New Romford area was developed on the site of a former barracks
- The town's growth was impacted by the railway and ring road
- Preserving the town's heritage assets is important for its identity and character

## Content

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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=9)–[10](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=10)).

**Between the wars.** Population went from **19,442 in 1921 to 35,918 in
1931** ([p. 26](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=26)). Romford became a municipal borough and its town hall opened in
1937. 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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=31)).

## Why the shape of the town matters

The report's summary of morphological change ([pp. 43](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=43)–[44](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf#page=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)](https://democracy.havering.gov.uk/documents/s78051/08.2.1%20201027_Romford%20Masterplan%20SPD_Baseline%20-%20Heritage%20Report.pdf)**
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](/history) itself,
the [Romford Town Centre Masterplan](/romford-masterplan) that this report
underpins, and the [Waterloo Estate regeneration](/waterloo-estate) now
building on the old barrack ground.

## Source

- Canonical URL: https://cotleighroad.com/romford-history
- Typed record: https://cotleighroad.com/index.json