Dagenham

Dagenham first appeared in a document (as Dæccanhaam) in a charter of Barking Abbey dating from 666 AD (though alternative 7th century dates have been suggested for the charter). The name almost certainly originated with a small farmstead, the "ham" or farm of a man called Daecca, as Dæccan hamm in Old English means home of a man called Dæcca.[3] The charter was made to reflect a transfer of land from Aethelred, kinsman of King Saebbi of Essex, to Barking Abbey.[4]

Dagenham has been historically defined by its ancient parish boundaries. The parish of Dagenham was formed in the medieval period from part of the huge manor of Barking, which was owned by the Nunnery of Barking Abbey. The Barking manor also included Barking and Great Ilford,[5] which reversed the usual situation where a parish would be divided into one or more manors. As with other manors, the area held declined over time, and Barking Abbey was dissolved in 1539. The parish boundaries remained constant and were used to define Dagenham right up until the Municipal Borough of Dagenham was abolished in 1965.

Like most Essex Thames-side parishes, Dagenham was laid out on a N-S axis to give it a share of the marshes by the river, the agricultural land in the centre and the woods and commons on the poorer soils on the high ground in the north. Dagenham included a significant part of the now mostly lost Hainault Forest.

South of Dagenham was a low-lying area including the Dagenham levels and Dagenham Marsh, these having been subject to periodic flooding from the Thames, and flood banks were built to protect the farmland, culminating in defences and a flood gate on the Beam River being built in the 17th century by Dutch engineers.[6] In 1707 an exceptionally high tide swept away fourteen feet of embankment and flooded over 1,000 acres of land, the description given by Daniel Defoe when he visited eight years later giving the area inundated as being 5000 acres is today considered an exaggeration.[6] The "Dagenham Breach" widened over time to a width of 400 feet, allowing the Thames to strip the top layer of marsh clay from the flood plain and deposited it as a mud bank in the Thames where it became a danger to shipping. Despite various remedies, the breach was not securely filled and a further flood occurred in 1718 after which, under an act of parliament, over £40,000 of public money was spent on successfully closing the breach[6] roughly at the location of Dagenham Dock. The closure of the gap left behind a large lake, also known as "Dagenham Breach" which became a popular spot for anglers. The lake is still there but much of it has silted up or been filled in and is now surrounded by industry,[7] but parts can still be identified as the lakes to the north of Ford's plant and also where Breach Lane follows the now lost western outline of the lake.

Dagenham was formerly home to the famous annual whitebait feast. The custom appears to have been started by the King's Commissioner of Works to celebrate the closure of the breach in the seawall around 1714–20, and was held every subsequent spring, on or around Trinity Sunday.

Many years later, Sir Robert Preston MP, invited his friend George Rose the Secretary of the Treasury and others to celebrate the feast, and on another occasion Rose invited the Prime Minister, William Pitt. Thereafter it became an obligatory ritual of government for the entire cabinet to come to Dagenham and celebrate the security of the Thames and over time this simple but hearty meal based on Whitebait and local Essex Ale grew more lavish, including turtle, grouse, champagne and a range of other luxury food and drink. Eventually the cabinet tired of the long trip to Dagenham and moved the event to Greenwich.[8]

In 1931 the Ford Motor Company relocated from Trafford Park in Manchester, to a larger new plant in Dagenham, which was already the location of supplier Briggs Motorway Bodies. A 500-acre (200 ha) riverside site was developed to become Europe's largest car plant, a vast vertically integrated site with its own blast furnaces and power station, importing iron ore and exporting finished vehicles. By the 1950s Ford had taken over Briggs at Dagenham and its other sites at Doncaster, Southampton, Croydon and Romford. At its peak the Dagenham plant had 4,000,000 square feet (370,000 m²) of floor space and employed over 40,000 people, although this number gradually fell during the final three decades of the 20th century as production methods advanced and Ford invested in other European factories as well. Some of Britain's best selling cars, including the Fiesta, Escort, Cortina and Sierra, were produced at the plant over the next 71 years.[9]

On 20 February 2002, full production was discontinued due to overcapacity in Europe and the relative difficulty of upgrading the ageing site compared with mostly newer European production facilities such as Almussafes (Valencia, Spain) and Cologne. Other factors leading to the closure of the Auto-assembly line were the need of the site for the new Diesel Centre of Excellence, which produces half of Ford's Diesel Engines worldwide, and the UK employment laws when compared to Spanish, German and Belgian laws.

In 2005 Cummins went into a joint venture and offered $15 million (US) to reinstate the factory. Ford and Cummins offered a good redundancy package, billed as one of the best in UK manufacturing. It is the location of the Dagenham wind turbines.[10] Some 4,000 people now work at the Ford plant.[11] The movie Made in Dagenham (2010) is a dramatisation of the 1968 Ford sewing machinists strike at the plant, when female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination and unequal pay.

Sterling, who manufactured British Army weapons and Jaguar car parts, were also based in Dagenham until they went bankrupt in 1988.

Other industrial names once known worldwide were Ever Ready, whose batteries could be found in shops throughout the Commonwealth, Bergers Paint and the chemical firm of May & Baker who in 1935 revolutionized the production of antibiotics with their synthetic sulfa-drug known as M&B 693. The May & Baker plant, owned and run by Sanofi-Aventis, occupied a 108-acre site in Rainham Road South, near Dagenham East Underground station. It was abandoned in 2013 when the company closed it. BeFirst, a company working on behalf of the council, began to redevelop the site for commercial opportunities. NTT have their London1 data centre on this site, and the Eastbrook Studios is currently under construction.

Dagenham was an ancient, and later civil, parish in the Becontree hundred of Essex.[12] The Metropolitan Police District was extended in 1840 to include Dagenham. The parish formed part of the Romford Rural District from 1894.[13][14] Dagenham Parish Council offices were located on Bull Street.

The expansion of the Greater London conurbation into the area caused the review of local government structures, and it was suggested in 1920 that the Dagenham parish should be abolished and its area divided between Ilford Urban District and Barking Town Urban District.[15] Separately, the London County Council proposed that its area of responsibility should be expanded beyond the County of London to cover the area.[16] Instead, in 1926 the Dagenham parish was removed from the Romford Rural District and designated as an urban district.[13] In 1938, in further recognition of its development, Dagenham became a municipal borough.[17] In 1965 the Municipal Borough of Dagenham was abolished and its former area became part of the London Borough of Barking,[18] which was renamed Barking and Dagenham in 1980.[19] For elections to the Greater London Council, Dagenham was part of the Barking electoral division until 1973 and then the Dagenham electoral division until 1986.

The church of St Peter and St Paul formed the heart of the former village

In 1205 Dagenham was large enough to have a chaplain, and the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul was probably built at around that time.[20] In 1854, the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway was built through the south of Dagenham, near the River Thames. In 1885 a new direct route from Barking to Pitsea, via Upminster, was built with Dagenham station opened just north of the village. Dagenham Dock station opened on the original southern route in 1908. Dagenham was still an undeveloped village, when building of the vast Becontree estate by the London County Council began in the early 1920s.[21] The building of the enormous council estate, which also spread into the neighbouring parishes of Ilford and Barking,[15] caused a rapid increase in population.[22] In 1932 the electrified District line of the London Underground was extended to Upminster through Dagenham with stations opened as Dagenham and Heathway and today called Dagenham East and Dagenham Heathway.[23] Dagenham East was the location of the Dagenham East rail crash in 1958.[24] Services on the London Tilbury & Southend line at Dagenham East were withdrawn in 1962.

The Barking & Dagenham Post is printed weekly and also published online.