A public house under various descriptions has existed at the
corner of High Road, Vange and Clay Hill Road (formerly Timberlog Lane) since before 1840 when the present
building is said to have become the Barge.
A previous name had been the bigamous 'The Man With
Seven Wives' which is thought to have derived from the publicans' surname which was Wife.
The house
or 'beer house' or even 'beer shop', as they were described in the 1800s, may have taken the name
'Barge Inn' from as early as 1840 though there are various newspaper articles from the 1850s confirming
the name 'Inn' in the title. The first licencee was John Adey who shared the house with his
wife Frances and their children. For many years the Hornchurch Brewery provided the ale
including the period when the name was changed to the 'Old Barge Inn', which it remained well into
the 20th century. Around the 1950s it taken over by the Mann, Crossman & Paulin brewery chain who
also owned the Bull at Vange. A large Manns sign was then erected to one of the chimney stacks. From
the 1930s to the early 2000s the licence was held by successive generations of the Evans family.Today the pub is
known simply as the Barge.
In April 2015 the public house closed without warning and was boarded up. After many years
of standing empty it was finally bought in 2019 by South Essex Islamic Trust for conversion to an Islamic cultural centre and
place of worship. Following the conversion it formally opened as The South Essex Islamic Community Centre in 2022. | 
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