'Alberta' Gladstone Road.

Helen Calver’s grandparents (Evan and Emily Jones) lived in a bungalow called ‘Alberta’ in Gladstone Road, Langdon Hills. The date of the photograph is unknown, but they were in residence at the time of the 1949 Electoral Register.

Helen remembers her dad taking her there once when she was very young, but there wasn’t much of it remaining.  Over time, she had forgotten the exactly location.  Gladstone Road is now part of Mark’s Hill Nature Reserve.

The second photograph, taken in High Road, Langdon Hills, shows Helen’s Grandfather with his bicycle at the right side of the picture.   The second shop to his left was Tudor Stores.  The small shop in the middle of the picture was Baldwin’s ironmongers.  Further to the left were Cottis’s and Grays Co-op on the corner of Osborne Road.  The road on the left of the picture in front of the gas street light is Vowler Road.

Unfortunately the quality of the two pictures is quite poor, however they do give an idea of how the bungalow had once looked.

This link takes you to Helen’s article about her Parent’s bungalow ‘Mandalay’ in Third Avenue, Dunton.  Click Here

 

 

'Alberta' Gladstone Road.
Helen Calver
High Road, Langdon Hills
Helen Calver

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  • With regard to Alberta, Gladstone Road, could someone please tell me whereabouts it was in relation to Fenella, Gladstone Road. We lived at Fenella late 50s early 60s, we then moved to Railway Approach, Laindon. My name at the time was Frieda Fordham.

    Editor: Fenella was to the north of Alberta in Gladstone Road, with several other bungalows in between them.

    By Mrs Frieda Johnstone (20/01/2020)
  • So if the large white two story building was Cottis’s, where was the actual bakery? Their shop further north, over the bridge and a few doors from Bata, was a simple one story little store. I assume this was simply a second sales outlet. Did the family live in this white building? Upstairs perhaps? Was the downstairs the bakery plus sales store?

    Editor:  According to Patsy Mott’s article “John (Known as Jack) Rose, the bakery was at the back of the (near Osborne Road) shop. Her uncle Jack was a master baker there. 

    By Alan Davies (15/09/2015)
  • Yes, the bathhouse was just past Cottis’s. Opposite Vowler Road after the tree in the second picture I think was a grocer/greengrocer that was in the green shield stamp scheme.  I have vague memories of Mr Upton the barber and a cycle shop. Much later, say 1960, there was another barber located approximately where the bathhouse used to be that was run by two brothers one of whom later set up a ladies hairstylist in Basildon that may have been called Peters. The same brother used to attend the boarding house at Palmers to cut our hair, this would been around 1955/56.

    By Gerald Jones (12/09/2015)
  • I visited Alberta many times, Emily Jones (née Markin) and Elias Evan Jones was my aunt and uncle, we would often walk from Nightingale Avenue, through the woods to see them.  They later moved to Staneway, only about half mile away and enjoyed some modern conveniences in Basildon.

    By Chris Markin (10/09/2015)
  • The large white building which Nina identifies as Grays Co-Op may have been, at some later stage, the public baths. It is about the correct locality. The baths are mentioned a few times in these archives and seem to have been in existence for only a short time. Why I cannot imagine. I would have thought there would have been a substantial demand for a bath in Laindon!! I was sent to the baths a few times as a young lad. One had to take your own towel. I cannot remember about soap. I think the baths only existed circa 1940-1942.

    The gas light at the corner of Vowler Road evokes a distant memory. Each evening a gent (presumably an employee of the gas company) went up and down the High Road carrying a ladder. His job was to rest his ladder on the two arms which jutted out of the pole, just below the lamp, ascend his ladder and turn on the gas light. In the morning he again went up and down the High Road, this time extinguishing the gas lamps.

    By Alan Davies (08/09/2015)
  • The large white building was Cottis’s with Gray’s Co-op next on the left, on the corner of Osborne Road.  The bathhouse had been across on the other corner of Osborne Road. There were three or four other buildings between the bathhouse and Salisbury Avenue.

    By Nina Humphrey(née Burton) (08/09/2015)

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