Gone native

As some of you probably know (and the rest of you probably yet don’t, but are about to find out), I’m an Essex boy¹. We all have our crosses to bear, you might say. I’ve not lived in the south-east in over ten years now, and have never suffered from the worst excesses of the Estuary accent (although as will attest, I am still incapable of pronouncing the word ‘ball’ as anything but ‘baw’, and I frequently lapse and use glottal – or glo’al – stops). Last weekend, we visited my folks in Upminster, and I realised that I was having difficulties understanding the Estuary accent and its accompanying mangled grammar.

A case in point was this: I overheard a conversation between three girls on a train that went something along the lines of “where’s this train go?” “it goes Rainham.” “are we going Rainham?” and so on, without once using a preposition with a place name. Earlier that same day, I’d heard a man describe where he lived thus: “I live Station Road”.

I’d be grateful if one of the south-east folks could comment on whether this really is a widespread dialect feature, since I can’t remember it being used that widely when I was younger (that said, my mum’s family have used a similar construction, in that they would talk about “going down Basildon” or “going down Pitsea”).

1. a debatable point: I grew up in the London Borough of Havering, had an Essex address (and a Romford postcode), and lived in a town with an Underground station. East London or Essex – you decide.