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History of Rochford
THE WORKHOUSE – BARRACK LANE – THE PECULIAR PEOPLE
Moving on we have Union Lane to the left which led to the entrance of the Rochford Union Workhouse, a complex of buildings, hospital and chapel, constructed in 1837 to accommodate some 300 inmates.
Many of those old buildings formed part of Rochford Hospital by the 1940’s and one or two still remain.
Opposite Union Lane, between The Marlborough Head and the curry shop used to be Barrack Lane, where somewhat forbidding barracks had been built to house the militia placed here as a kind of Home Guard when invasion by Napoleon was a real threat.
In one of those dwellings was born, in 1800, James Banyard, a ne’er-do-well in his early years, who was later to found The Peculiar People, an extreme sect which rejected most modern things, not least doctors, for example.
Rochford was its base, eventually with a Chapel here, but Peculiars spread worldwide and do still exist today. Banyard, for all that, was buried in St. Andrew’s churchyard, with his grave a Listed building.
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