The society received an enquiry about the Lodge Lane area and particularly some house built on Lodge Lane around 1902. The name “Lodge Lane” is puzzling – what “Lodge” ? The route itself seems to be of considerable antiquity along the ridge of chalk and gravel cut off from the North Downs by the changing course of the Thames in pre-history.

From the 1910 Ordnance Survey map

The road was probably resurfaced, widened and slightly repositioned in the 1920s/30s. It is possible that the road gets its name from the lodge to the Grays Hall Estate. This was quite a large estate and probably had a lodge. Lodge Farm was just north of Lodge Lane. A scheme for building houses south of Lodge Lane on the Greys Hall estate was announced in August, 1918 and a more detailed plan was published in 1921. According to Terry Carney’s book, Thurrock in the Twenties, in 1928, two newly built houses on Lodge Lane were on sale for £500. The Oak had its license application granted in April 1929 and a number of shops were built adjoining it at the beginning of the 1930s. The “Nutberry” estate on the north side of Lodge Lane was also built at the beginning of the 1930s. The name “Lodge Estate” was applied to these various developments and it was described in the Thurrock Gazette as being “like a new suburb or Garden City”.

One of the early houses on Lodge Lane was built to the design of and to be lived in by Christopher Shiner the local architect and another was lived in by William Edwards, school master and council chairman after whom the school was named.

(Contributions from Susan Yates, John Webb and Norma Leach.)