diamond geezer

Saturday, March 29, 2025

45

45 Squared
11) BALGORES SQUARE, RM2
Borough of Havering, 110m×30m

Romford Garden Suburb was the brainchild of Liberal politician Herbert Raphael who in 1909 offered up his estate at Gidea Hall "to provide families with a well-built, modern home regardless of class or status". To encourage interest he established a competition to create 140 fully-furnished houses in the Arts and Crafts style, then invited the public to walk the streets as part of a domestic outdoor exhibition. A new station called Squirrels Heath & Gidea Park was opened to service visitors in 1910, and if you walk out of that station today and cross the car park you find yourself in Balgores Square.

It's long, thin and conveniently located, with a short parade of shops in one corner and a rim of large desirable homes. The first unit is occupied by a pleasingly retro dry cleaners, then a luxury dog groomers and a filler-friendly salon, as befits the denizens of pseudo-Essex. The original plan was that Balgores Square would be the estate's retail heart, entirely surrounded by arcaded shops with flats above by, but demand never quite materialised. A couple more commercial blocks were added on the north side, one with a splendid hare motif dated 1912, but the gap between them had to be filled by flats in the 1930s.

Likewise the centre of the square was originally pencilled in for an open-air market, but when developers discovered that Romford's ancient market charter forbade nearby competition that didn't happen either. Initially it remained as open space, as depicted in this rather lovely postcard of Balgores Square circa 1925, but eventually a few municipal tennis courts were added instead. More recently the council has shoehorned in a narrow car park instead and surrounded it with a hedge so neighbours can pretend it's not there. The majority of spaces are reserved for season ticket holders, and if you manage to grab one of the four others you've got 30 mins before charges kick in and rise steeply.

The two long sides of Balgores Square are endearingly residential, assuming you like large rustic semis with high gables, timber beams and decorative brickwork. The largest is Tudor House, which is only pretending to be that old and wouldn't have an integral garage were it genuine. One house had a geezery removal company in, the owners I suspect chuffed to have timed the changeover just before the stamp duty hike. Elsewhere I could only admire the effort put into all the front-gardening, especially the trimmed shrubbery, the full-on camellias and the bursts of pink blossom. I'm still not sure if the orange three-piece suite on the crazy paving outside number 8 was for sunbathing purposes or about to be chucked.

Architecturally the only duff note is the postwar office block at the southern end, occupied by a longstanding firm of Romford solicitors. But outside is an excellent double-sided map board provided by the Gidea Park and District Civic Society, which was erected to commemorate the centenary of Romford Garden Suburb. None of the Exhibition Houses are in Balgores Square but several lie along Balgores Lane, Squirrels Heath Avenue and Crossways which head north, and with the aid of these maps you can pick them out. Those maps are also on the excellent GPDCS website along with a full back history and two suggested walks and heavens look, here's the original 180 page exhibition brochure. If you like walking characterful suburban streets Gidea Park will not disappoint, perhaps all the way up to the 1930s Modernist houses and back, especially at this time of year when spring is at its most colourful.

You're only one purple train away from Balgores Square.

posted 10:00 :