In , I was invited to contribute to a local history column in the Romford Recorder , the weekly suburban newspaper serving the Borough of Havering, in the Essex suburbs of Greater London.
Havering History Cameos collects together around columns published to November in one book-length file. Some deal with incidents or episodes, others focus on localities within Havering, while a few attempt more analytical surveys β on topics such as farming, moats or windmills. Much of the material has not been made widely available before, but of course I have also relied considerably and with much gratitude upon the research of others in previous publications. These include classic local texts by long-dead chroniclers like Philip Morant, C.
Wilson, as well as work by more recent historians. I trust those latter will accept that the format rules out conventional academic referencing, although it precludes neither my admiration nor my gratitude. Writing about Havering half a century ago, I have also been the beneficiary of reminiscences by many contemporaries, for which I also express my appreciation. The columns are presented here in generally random order, in the hope that each one stands alone in the story it tells and the points it seek to make.
I have loosely grouped some of them together, either by locality or by subject for instance, the first world war. However, many of the pieces fall into both categories. Thus, stories about South Hornchurch and Harold Wood in are associated with other pieces about those districts.
Local historians rarely work from complete records and total recall. The material included here differs in some case from the published columns, although Recorder editing has been light and generally helpful. The newspaper, of course, chooses its own headlines. Perhaps the most unlikely aspect of the series is the fact that I have not lived in Havering since Indeed, I have been an infrequent visitor over the decades.
