If you are going into Rayleigh over the weekend, Rayleigh Through The Looking Glass still have their exhibition until Monday. It’s in the Rayleigh Town Council Chamber, The Pavilion, King George?s Playing Field (back of Webster?s Way car park) from 13th August to 25th August 2014. Open daily from 10am to 3pm (4pm at weekends & on Bank Holiday Monday).
There’s a chance to find out about Rayleigh men who served (and died) in WW1, buy books about local history, look at the large-scale Ordnance Maps of Rayleigh for 1959 to see what your street was like then, see lots of old photos, and read about the gruesome Rayleigh Bathchair murder of 1943.
A copy of the Southend Standard for 1943 mixes snippets about the war –
“Private James Cotgrove is a prisoner in Japanese hands. His home is at Tranmere , Kensington Road, Thorpe Bay”
-with the more ordinary –
The sanitary inspector is authorised to erect a notice at the Junction of Down Hall Road and London Road stating that the depositing of tins and cans is prohibited”
You thoroughly piqued my curiosity about the bath chair murder, so I looked it up. Very gruesome
A bit depressing! I was born in 1943, & it’s not encouraging that 71 years on we are still complaining about litter!
I popped into the exhibition this morning as I had some time left on my parking ticket after doing everything else I needed in town. Very good exhibition and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mike Davis, an incredibly enthusiastic and dedicated man. I hope he gets his planning permission and his funding for the Museum, something that can only be an asset to the town.