Borough in London, England
Barking and Dagenham
England's 1966 World Cup winners were captained by a Barking boy and managed by a Dagenham one, in a place that also built a giant estate and changed equal pay law.
Key information
- County
- Greater London (historically Essex)
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 219,000, 2021 Census
- Area
- about 36 square kilometres
- Known for
- The Becontree Estate, Ford Dagenham, the 1968 sewing machinists' strike, Barking Abbey
- Famous people
- Bobby Moore, Sir Alf Ramsey, Sandie Shaw, Dudley Moore (grew up there)
- Football clubs
- Dagenham & Redbridge (the Daggers), Barking FC
About Barking and Dagenham
The 1966 team talk that started in Barking and Dagenham
When England lifted the World Cup in 1966, two of the key figures came from the same patch of east London. Captain Bobby Moore was born in Barking in 1941. Manager Alf Ramsey was born in Dagenham in 1920. Ramsey was a Dagenham boy who played at right-back for Southampton and Spurs before becoming one of the most famous managers in English football. Moore was the cool-headed defender who collected the trophy from the Queen. Not a bad return for a place most people think of for cars and council houses.
The estate that housed a city
Between the early 1920s and the mid-1930s, the London County Council built the Becontree Estate on farmland and marsh. It was meant to provide the "homes fit for heroes" promised after the First World War, and it grew to around 27,000 homes. It was the largest council housing estate in the world. Families came from the crowded streets of the East End, Poplar and Bow, to houses with gardens and indoor bathrooms. Whole communities were relocated, and the estate's population grew to well over 100,000. The name comes from the old Becontree hundred, an ancient Essex division. Today the estate's tree-lined streets and uniform houses still define much of Dagenham.
The 187 women who changed British pay
Ford began making vehicles at Dagenham in 1931, on land beside the Thames. For decades the plant was the beating heart of local life, and car production there lasted until 2002, when the last Fiesta was made. Ford's engine plant is still at work. The factory's greatest legacy may be the strike of 1968. About 187 women sewing machinists, who stitched car seat covers, walked out in June after their work was graded as less-skilled rather than skilled and paid less than men's. The dispute stopped Ford's production lines within weeks. Employment secretary Barbara Castle stepped in to broker a deal, and the strike helped lead to the Equal Pay Act of 1970. The story was retold in the film Made in Dagenham in 2010 and a West End musical in 2014.
A king, a captain and a lot of fish
Barking's story begins in 666, when Erkenwald, later Bishop of London, founded Barking Abbey. His sister Ethelburga became its first abbess. It grew into one of the most important nunneries in England, and after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, English nobles submitted to William the Conqueror here. Henry VIII's dissolution ended the abbey in 1539, but you can still see its ruins and the 15th-century Curfew Tower. Nearby St Margaret's Church is where Captain James Cook married Elizabeth Batts in 1762. Barking was also a fishing town. In the 19th century its fleet, led by the Hewett family's Short Blue Fleet, was among the biggest in England, sending fish up to London by the boatload. Dagenham had its own watery drama. In 1707 the Thames burst through its river wall and flooded marshland, and the breach was not fully repaired until about 1720.
Daggers, pipers and a new riverside
Dagenham & Redbridge, known as the Daggers, formed in 1992 and reached the Football League in 2007. Barking FC, the Blues, has been a local fixture for far longer. The borough also produced the Dagenham Girl Pipers, founded in 1930, who went on to tour the world in kilts and tartan. Sandie Shaw, born in Dagenham, won Eurovision in 1967 with Puppet on a String, performing barefoot. For a taste of an older Barking and Dagenham, visit Eastbury Manor House, a Tudor mansion, or Valence House, a moated manor with a museum on local history. Parsloes Park gives Becontree residents room to breathe. Barking Riverside is the newest chapter, a huge housing development on the Thames with its own railway station, which opened in 2022.