I recently put two photos on the Wickford Library display board labelled by the photographer Chelmsford Road and Stock Road. Visitors have suggested different locations for these roads. Searching the Basildon Heritage collection I found other photos labelled Chelmsford Road, and one of them is almost the same photo as that labelled Stock Road. Can anyone tell me where these roads are?
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On a second look at the first photo, it looks like the short section of Station Road that is at the top of Carlton Road, off lower Brock Hill, taken in the early 1940s, the first photo that is. The other photos of Chelmsford Road do not seem right.
I never knew the roads in Jo Cullens photos as Chelmsford Road. The road which started off the Broadway at the Swan Pub was Swan Lane, which went up to Wantz Corner, where it became Lower Brock Hill to continue towards Fremnells House, Downham, White Lillies Farm and onto the Billericay/Chelmsford road, via Galleywood Common.
[Swan Lane was marked on some of the old Estate Sale maps as the Chelmsford Road – MW.]
You could get to Wantz Corner by going to Runwell Church to turn left into Church End Lane which, was, I believe, the rout the Eastern National bus took. The bus, turned left at the top of Brockhill to go towards, Downham, then on to Ramsden Heath and on to Billericay, where it turned to take what is now the B1007 to cross Galleywood common, and on to Chelmsford .
The original Chelmsford Road runs up Swan Lane, lower and upper Brock Hill to Downham and Chelmsford. It was signposted in the early days, but the new regime of Essex County Council have decided not to recognize this. But I dont remember any of these because the west side of Chelmsford Road was all fields except the occasional bungalow before Wantz Corner, the junction between Church End Road and Brock Hill. After that fields until Linden Road [garage]. On the east side very few bungalows which were laid well back off the road.
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