Romford Shopping Hall, in Market Place, was first opened in 1932 by entrepreneur Stanley Lloyd Sunnucks.
A decade earlier, Mr Sunnucks had built a similar shopping hall in East Ham – under the company name East Ham Shopping Hall Ltd – and decided to launch the Romford version following its success.
This postcard view of Market Place from the 1930s shows the original Romford Shopping Hall name (Image: Havering Libraries-Local Studies) It is for this reason that Romford Shopping Hall is listed in directories as East Ham Shopping Hall Ltd up until at least 1939, according to Havering Libraries.
READ MORE: The history of Romford shopping centres in nostalgic photos
But, it is not clear why the “Rumford” spelling, seen in some old photographs, began to be used.
After the shopping centre first opened in the 1930s, photographs from the time clearly show the sign reading “Romford Shopping Hall”.
According to a previous history feature in the Recorder, there was once an anecdote going round that a bomb from the war had damaged the letter O, turning it into a U.
Although unlikely to be true, post-war photographs of the building show it simply named as “Shopping Hall”.
When Mr Sunnucks died in 1953, his son James took over the company and officially renamed it Rumford Shopping Hall.
There was then some back-and-forth: James’ own sons later persuaded him to change it back to Romford, and then shortly after it became Rumford once again after “an unprecedented number of complaints to the council”, according to this paper’s previous reporting.
In the 1960s, the shopping hall got an extension on top of the original building dating back to the 19th century, as well as a repaint.
At this point, Rumford Shopping Hall was repositioned onto the canopy fascia, where it remained until the early years of the 21st century.
The building was demolished and rebuilt in 2011, with the red front and original Romford Shopping Hall name we know today.
