Rainham, London, the World

Rainham Hall in Havering is located not far from the legendary A13 (eulogised by Billy Bragg as the ‘trunk road to the sea’). It is a marvellous survival.

Rainham Hall, with flags

Standing next to a fine Norman church (reputed to have the second oldest door in the whole of London), it sits just off The Broadway, opposite the public library. Set back behind railings, it is too easy to disregard or pass by unnoticed, not least since it is open to the public for just three hours a week.

Rainham's Norman church

The house has been owned by the National Trust since 1949, a Georgian jewel in the midst of the industrialisation and transport infrastructure that surround the Rainham Marshes. And in many ways, the history of the Hall is the history of London itself, its economic power, its circulations and distributions, its comings and goings.

The Hall was built in 1729 by Captain John Harle, who dredged an inlet off the Thames nearby and built a wharf for his trading activities. The marble, wood and tiles that he traded are still evident throughout the house, which is a fine three-storey box in the Queen Anne style.

The painted staircase, Rainham Hall

The back door, Rainham Hall

 

Behind the house was originally a courtyard of buildings, probably used as stables and a brewhouse, and as part of his trading endeavour. It is now an attractive, well tended garden. The brewhouse features on the English Heritage buildings at risk register, but plans are afoot to convert it to a visitor reception area, café and community education space. Currently the house has none of these facilities, and so its potential as a community hub and tourism venture is under-exploited.

Rainham Hall gardens

I visited in order to attend a meeting with National Trust colleagues and others, to consider options for the development of the house. One issue was the absence of furniture, fittings and any indigenous collections. Another was the additional layer of significance left by 20^th century residents – a spate of restoration work, and then the use of the house during the war (as a banana depot) and afterwards (as a distribution point for health and welfare provision).

The team have devised some exciting options for bringing the house to life and telling the story of the Harles and their successors. One interesting story is that of the role of religion. A gate from the house to the Church is said to now be bricked up, because of the conversion of Harle’s son to Methodism.

The ghost of a gate at Rainham Hall?

For me, the house was a tangible reminder of the power of money and trade. As a ghost of a former era of London’s development as a world city, Rainham Hall is a residue of a time when Britain ruled the waves and drew vast stores of wealth from transatlantic exchange. It stands as a symbol of why the UK occupies the place it does in today’s world economy, an echo of an earlier wave of economic growth and development, no less than the nearby docks at Tilbury, City airport, and the Dartford Crossing, which all perform a similar function for more recent times.

Patrick Keiller’s three films ‘London’ (1994), ‘Robinson in Space’ (1997) and more recently ‘Robinson in Ruins’ (2010) explore similar territory, using architecture and landscape to essay politico-economic critiques of late-capitalist Britain. ‘Robinson in Space’ even briefly features Rainham Hall – it is mistaken by the eponymous Robinson for ‘Dracula’s House Carfax in Purfleet’ (until the narrator points out that in fact ‘we were still in Rainham’). Carfax was the house to which Count Dracula was transported from his Transylvanian Castle in 50 boxes of earth. Rainham wharf was where the nightsoil of Londoners was brought to be spread on the fields of Essex.

The Robinson Institute, Tate Britain installation to 14 October 2012

Transportation – of wood and marble, of earth, of bananas – seems central to understanding the role of Rainham Hall and the context in which it sits. Which is why I was delighted to hear of plans to recreate, for visitors, the sights and sounds of the River Thames – the A13 of the 18^th century.