About Wickford

Established in May 2010, from a shop which has now been demolished and replaced by an extended supermarket car park, the Wickford office is managed by Andrew Donnelly. The team remains the same as it has done for years, they love their jobs and relish the challenges we are faced with making clients moves happen.

Wickford is a small town with plenty of history dating back around two thousand years and is divided by two postcodes SS11 & SS12 separated via the train line. SS11 is split between the villages of Shotgate and Runwell. In 1907, houses were built as part of the `Plotlands’ initiative in Enfield Road and Oak Avenue. In 1921, the Archer family bought Shot Farm, and in 1927 sold land for development. This led to the foundation of modern-day Shotgate, consisting of Bruce Grove, 1st to 5th avenues and the shopping parades. In more recent times the newest part of Shotgate Hodgson’s way industrial estate was built in 1989 which was named after WW2 RAF William Henry Hodgson who was shot down but diverted his Hurricane aircraft and avoided the homes above in the Shotgate estate. A war memorial has been made in memory of William near Dollymans farm with some original remains of his aircraft. Wickford has many Ofsted-rated schools such as Hilltop Infants & juniors, Wickford Church of England and outstanding Ofsted-rated Beauchamps High School. Some of the main attractions in Wickford is the Memorial Park covering over 80 acres of parkland including football/cricket pitches, tennis/basketball courts, children’s playground and much more!

Runwell is the other village in the SS11 postcode which had inhabitants dating back to the 1200s when the church (St Mary’s) was built but the population of the village increased rapidly during World War two as this was a main evacuation point for children coming out of major cities for their protection. Later on in the 70s & 80s Runwell held annual village fairs and fetes during the summer time with many of the proceeds going to Runwell Hospital which has closed now making way for the brand new St Luke’s housing estate being extremely popular with many new homeowners there, they have entered the final stages of building works but already has a sports social club and plans for shops and schools to be placed there also. Runwell has the ever so famous River Crouch going straight through the village heading into the town centre as well as the village hall and Runwell infants and junior schools.

SS12 consists of the Nevendon Area, London Road & the Wick Meadows estate. Nevendon & the London Road area are among the oldest areas within Wickford. Nevendon heading towards neighbouring towns such as Basildon and London Road heads towards Billericay. Carter & Ward built homes in most of these areas are held in high regard within Wickford, one of their trademark builds were the “keyhole” style bungalows mainly found in the flower-named roads in Wickford Laurel, Lilac, Lavender and Azalea. Nevendon is home to Wickford fire station and again has many choices of schools including North Crescent, Grange, Castledon, Wickford infants, juniors & Bromfords secondary school. There are plenty of lovely riverside walks off London Road as well as countryside walks heading to Downham. A couple of notable people grew up within these areas such as Chantelle Houghton famously winning Big Brother in 2006 and Steve Tilson managing Southend United for seven years leading them to two consecutive promotions from the foot of league two to a championship club visiting two cup finals and a night that goes down in history beating premier league champions Manchester United 1-0 in the league cup with a superb freekick strike from local lad Freddy Eastwood, a night no one will forget. Chris Brooks the well-know radio DJ and the famous Banjo family have all lived in Wickford.

The Wick Meadows is what many people in the area would class as the newest part of Wickford homes, with building commencing in the 1980s but still being built to this day off of Twinstead. This is an extremely popular area for commuters heading to London due to its easy access into town, the train line runs to Billericay, Shenfield, Stratford and Liverpool Street usually running every twenty minutes but some mornings as quick as ten minutes apart! The Wick Meadows has a parade of shops located in Silva Island Way, doctors, new life church and fantastic schools such as Oakfield and Abacus both of which follow the catchment to the two main high schools as previously mentioned Beauchamps and Bromfords.

A great website for Wickford history is https://www.wickfordhistory.org.uk/