User:Mel Pember/sandbox

Bedfords Park, Romford.

The Sports Ground in the park.

The large meadow just inside the main Broxhill Road gate was ploughed during the Second World War but reinstated as a playing field therafter. It provided two council-owned football pitches and one cricket square. When Tolford Cricket Club, formed by employees of the Ford Motor Company plant in Dagenham, hired the field for cricket it changed its name to Bedfords Park Cricket Club. The club played there until it folded in the mid 'sixties.

The Club supplemented the concrete slab-construction changing rooms provided by gaining permission to build its own tea pavilion/scorebox and installed a timber sightscreen at the ground's north end. Fixtures were very varied. Villages, neighbourhood sides, works' teams and local 'senior' clubs' second elevens formed the bulk of the list. East and north London sides loved to visit the peace and beauty of the Bedfords Park facility, but return fixtures were not always popular with Bedfords members. Consequently, an increasing proportion of matches became 'home' games.

When the Club ceased to operate the site reverted to meadow but the Havering Cricket Club, whose ground is about two hundred yards away, formed a Third Team and it was able to reclaim the land for cricket and use it as their second ground, still within sight of the distinctive round water tower.