Bill’s jigsaw of village life wrecked by the A12

"I was shown a picture of a house I didn't recognise because although it is still standing it has changed so much,'' he said.

"I started to think that if that house had altered so dramatically, then how much more had the rest of the village changed?"

Bill decided to collect as much information - both visual and oral - as he could about the village.

He now has over 300 photographs of Rivenhall taken over the past century, a selection of which are currently on show in Witham Library.

In 1995 some of these were published in his book Rivenhall Remembered and Bill hopes that more pictures will now come to light to form the basis of a second book.

"To me it's like a jigsaw where some of the pieces are missing."

Brought up in a Fenland village, Bill served in the RAF as a reargunner in the last war, settling in Rivenhall "my adopted home" in 1953.

It was a decade before the A12 split and destroyed much of the village and a lot of the old houses which now only survive in his photographs.

Now, as parish council history recorder and secretary of the Witham History Group, Bill is anxious to rediscover that lost heritage.

Victims of the development included Roy's Cafe, a popular stopping place for motorists, the Prince of Wales pub and the Victorian Workmen's Hall.

"It was a meeting place for working men that has been completely lost," Bill said. "It housed a library, billiard table and dominoes, with a fire and newspaper always provided."

Also lost in the expansion of the road was the village poorhouse, built in 1784 and the old tollhouse, later a police house.

"In all Rivenhall lost around 30 houses," Bill said.

The photographs show how Rivenhall has changed from a busy working community to a largely residential village.

Pictures show men and women at work, on the land, at the wheelwright's shop and the blacksmith's forge.

Bill's research reveals that in the 1881 census 162 farmworkers were listed as living in the village, along with 47 servants, four blacksmiths, three wheelwrights, as well as shoe and bootmakers, a silk weaver, an umbrella maker, dressmaker and laundresses.

Close by the still-surviving Rivenhall Oak was the village shop and beer house that served the community.

Run by a Mr Shelley, the shop was demolished in the 1950s. "I remember the old shop, full of cardboard boxes with everything mixed up together, but the shopkeeper knew where everything was.

"It was a busy community that has largely disappeared. A lost world," said Bill.

The photographs and sketches that make up the exhibition show a harder reality behind the rural idyll. A photograph of a row of council houses, built in the 1920s, shows the only source of drinking water was a roadside tap.

"It was the usual thing in the country to have to walk for water, for drinking, washing, cooking or bathing," Bill said.

"In Rickstones Road one water pump had to serve five families and a lot of families had five or six children."

Characters abound in the exhibition, often appearing from babyhood, through schooldays to maturity. Alfred Turner first appears as a toddler with his rocking horse, then as a pupil at the village school and later as shopkeeper at the Oak Stores.

One of the first families to move in to the Oak Road council houses, the Hulmes, pose proudly outside their front door over 70 years ago, while a group shot of the Witham ARP shows the Rivenhall GPs, Drs Denholm and Benjamin.

Other famous Rivenhall faces include Fred Spall who ran a petrol station in the village in the 1930s and designed an ambulance on a motorcycle chassis during the war, Mr Murton, the local builder between the wars, pictured with his Austin 7, long ladder balanced precariously on the roof and lifetime Labour supporter and farm worker Albert Moss who went on to become a local councillor and JP.

"These local characters were part of the village, they were what made the place," Bill said.

Now he is anxious to fill the gaps in his collection, he has no picture of the Birdcage Cottages terrace which disappeared in the 1960s in the wake of the A12 development or of eight to 10 cottages which stood between Hoo Hall and the Oak.

"It's not just a case of looking at pictures," Bill said. "It's looking for clues, trying to find the real story behind them.

"I think the old cliche is true, a picture is worth a thousand words. In a few years places are gone and then, in a few years more, the people who remember them are gone. You try describing the house where you were born. If you have a photograph then that's a different matter.

"As for me I will still continue to look for the last few missing pieces of the jigsaw. These pictures give people roots in the past, they take people back to Rivenhall and make sure that it will not be forgotten."

Rivenhall Remembered is at Witham Library until October 22, 1998.

Don't forget to visit the This Is Essex hypermarket for our Then and Now series of books on towns in Essex.

Top pictures: The old Fox Inn between the wars, left, and friends and workmates Albert Moss and Bill Stock take a well-earned break.

Third picture: Remembering Rivenhall - old photograph collector Bill Prime.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.