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Shops, Businesses, Housing and Public Buildings 1890s-1980s (East Side) Shops, Businesses, Housing and Public Buildings 1890s-1980s (West Side) Please note: These are work in progress. Some of the earliest buildings to occupy a place in the High Road were put up by Estate Agents. These were normally small wooden structures and some survived well into the 1900s. The first shops began to open in the High Road possibly as early as the late 1800s and these were built close to the railway station. Some shops were built in groups while others stood alone and it was not uncommon for the shopkeeper and his family to live above the premises. The Laindon Hotel was probably the largest stand-alone building, and this was built in 1896 and survived through to 1991. As the local population grew the shop numbers increased and with various other buildings such as halls, residential houses, petrol stations, a school and the doctor's surgery, it wasn't long before much of the entire length of the High Road from the railway station to the Fortune-of-War and beyond to the Noak Hill/Wash Road junction had some kind of property or amenity fronting it. The popularity of the High Road as a shopping centre probably peaked around the 1950s, as, following Basildon's designation as a new town, the High Road in its present form was not part of the eventual 'Master Plan' for Laindon, and this left traders with a very uncertain future. Some closed altogether, while others like Henbest, and Charsley's moved to the main town centre at Basildon in 1958 when the first buildings were ready for use. Those that continued were given the opportunity to relocate to the new Laindon Shopping Centre, which after some years of delay finally opened in late 1969. The High Road today is virtually unrecognisable to how it was having been considerably altered particulary at the south end. Here the road was realigned in the 1970s to eradicate the bend and steep incline of Station Approach, and the Laindon 4 housing estate with a one way service road now runs parallel from Laindon Link to Northumberland Avenue. Opposite this estate are two remaining shops on the corner with Durham Road which was recently named Parkinson's Corner in honour of Cliff Parkinson, whose adjacent shop served the area for over 30 years. Further down in the late 1960s/early 1970s a duel carriageway linking Laindon Link and St. Nicholas Lane was created along with a roundabout at each end. It was here that the site for the shopping centre to replace the shops was chosen. Between the railway station and the West Mayne/St. Nicholas Lane roundabout with the exception of the aforementioned shops there are no other surviving pre-new town buildings. The section leading to the Fortune-of-War roundabout is still largely residential though a good deal of the original houses have long since disappeared. The actual course of the road here has remained unaltered and there is still one pre-new town shop (formerly a butchers) which somehow seems to have escaped the developers. The most recent change was the demolition of Laindon High Road School during May/June 2007 as part of a new housing development called Radford Park. There is also a plan to replace the privately owned shopping centre with a new development to include shops and houses. Text written 2006 with revisions 2006-2007. Copyright © 2006-2007, Basildon History Online. All rights reserved. |
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