For 779 years, people have gathered at Romford. They have come to trade, work, shop, celebrate, protest, dance, meet friends and build new lives. This August Bank Holiday, Meet Me by the Fountain brings some of those histories back into the Market Place in a free outdoor sound and projection spectacle celebrating the people and stories that have shaped Romford.
The work forms part of Market Town, a major new project exploring Romford Market as a place of exchange, community and collective memory. Across Friday 28 and Saturday 29 August, the market becomes a stage: by day through Suburban Legends, a playful gathering of characters, myths and memories performed by local people; and after dark through Meet Me by the Fountain, when projection, music, voices and light transform the Market Place. Together, the two works ask what it means for a market to survive for almost eight centuries – and what its next chapter might be.
Pre-production image render of Meet Me by the Fountain
Meet Me by the Fountain takes the long view. Beginning deep beneath our feet, when ice sheets, rivers and ancient forests shaped the landscape, it travels through Romford Market’s founding in 1247 and the centuries of change that followed: medieval livestock and fairs; the arrival of the railway and industry; migration from the East End; two world wars; post-war rebuilding; the transformation of the market into a place for people rather than livestock; and Romford’s extraordinary disco, alternative and rave cultures of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Eventually, the piece looks forward to 2047, the market’s 800th anniversary, and asks what kind of town we might create for the generations still to come.
At its centre is the return of a lost Romford landmark. The Liberty Fountain, once a familiar meeting place in the town centre, has been reimagined as a monumental projection surface and a guide through the story. It becomes part memory, part oracle: something from Romford’s past brought back to help us look at the present and imagine the future.
However, this is not just a history told about Romford. It has been made with Romford.
Bellringing Practice at St Edward the Confessor Church. Bellringers gather every Wednesday to rehearse, preserving a tradition that has echoed across Romford’s Market Place for centuries.
Nick Hart and Tom Moore following a recording session at St Mary Magdalene Church, North Ockendon, where traditional folk songs were recorded for Meet Me by the Fountain.
Over many months, the project has gathered memories, conversations, archive material, music, photographs and voices from across the borough. Market traders, shoppers and local residents have shared their stories. Havering Libraries’ Local Studies collection and Havering Museum have opened up their archives. The bells of St Edward the Confessor Church have been recorded and rehearsed, alongside the North Ockendon handbell ringers and the young musicians of Romford Drum & Trumpet Corps. Folk musicians Nick Hart, Tom Moore and Jolene Missing have brought traditional songs back into the landscape, while voices spanning generations – including 82-year-old Bruce and 19-year-old Inés – carry different moments of Romford’s story. Havering resident, and internationally celebrated artist, Imogen Heap’s ethereal vocals also become part of the work’s final movement.
These contributions have been woven into the fabric of the piece. Composer James Bulley has woven bells, instruments, oral histories, field recordings and newly recorded music into an immersive soundscape. Writer Vickie Donoghue has transformed extensive historical research and local testimony into a text that moves between fact, memory and poetry. NOVAK’s projections draw upon photographs, objects, faces and fragments from across Romford’s history, making the Market Place itself a vast canvas.
The result is complex and layered. No single story could represent a town, particularly one that has been changing for nearly eight centuries. Instead, Meet Me by the Fountain creates a chorus: young and old, past and present, individual memories and collective histories overlapping one another.
Young musicians from the Romford Drum & Trumpet Corps rehearse material that will feature in Meet Me by the Fountain.
The bass drum of the Romford Drum & Trumpet Corps, bearing the corps’ distinctive crest, during recording sessions for Meet Me by the Fountain.
The title comes from a simple phrase remembered by generations of people who grew up here: “If we get lost, meet me by the fountain.” It captures something at the heart of the work. Town centres are made not only from buildings, roads or shops, but from encounters – the places where we recognise one another, wait for one another and find our way back to one another.
For two nights this August, the fountain returns and Romford Market becomes that meeting place once again.
Meet Me by the Fountain
Friday 28 & Saturday 29 August 2026
8.30pm & 9.30pm
Romford Market
Free
Lead Image Credit: BRIAN HARRIS / Alamy
Produced by Havering London in partnership with GDIF and supported by Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, London Borough of Havering, Romford BID and Historic England.