The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

Greater even than the transformation which has taken place in Stratford and the Hams is that which has converted Barking from a straggling fishing village, dependent on the famous Benedictine abbey, after which it is named, that was founded in the ninth century by St. Erkenwald, into a thriving market town, that is still rapidly widening its boundaries. The abbey itself, that was burnt by the Danes in 870, and rebuilt a century later by King Edgar, is gone, but for all that something of the old romance and sanctity still seems to cling to the district it dominated, that was for centuries looked upon by the faithful as one of the most sacred in England. The first abbess was the saintly St. Ethelburga, sister of the founder, and she and St. Erkenwald were both buried in the abbey church. After the rebuilding of the abbey under Edgar, until the dissolution of the monasteries, its history was intimately bound up with that of the whole country, the holy women who successively held the office of abbess, many of them of royal birth, taking a very active share in politics, and unlike their successors in modern nunneries, exercising jurisdiction over men as well as women. Barking Abbey became celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the land for the miracles wrought in it, and also as a place of education for the daughters of aristocratic parents. The Abbess of Barking was one of the four ladies of England who were baronesses in their own right, a privilege that included, strange to say, the right to a seat in the Witenagemot, or Great Council, the predecessor of the Parliament the doors of which have ever been so jealously closed against women. The prosperity of the great abbey of Barking seems to have begun to decline about the middle of the fourteenth century through the flooding of some lands belonging to it, but it was still a very valuable property when it was confiscated by Henry VIII., who, with unusual generosity, gave to the then abbess an annuity of two hundred marks for the rest of her life.

The only remaining relics of the once beautiful and extensive abbey buildings are a few bits of the old walls and a massive gateway—that from which, according to local tradition, William the Conqueror set forth on his first royal progress through his newly acquired kingdom—which is known as 'The Five-bell Gate,' the curfew bell having been rung from the campanile above it, which used to bear the beautiful name of the Chapel of the Holy Rood, there having been a bas-relief of the Crucifixion on its walls.

The parish church of Barking, dedicated to St. Margaret—the churchyard of which is entered from the Five-bell Gate—retains parts of the original Norman building and of the early English additions to it, and contains several interesting old brasses; but, unfortunately, what was some years ago a very characteristic example of the transition between the two styles has been almost completely spoiled by so-called restoration, the massive piers having been whitewashed and the beautiful timber roof covered in with an over-ornamented plaster ceiling.

The town of Barking is rather picturesquely situated on the left bank of the Roding, about a mile above the creek named after it. It contains, however, very little of interest except the ancient market-hall, said to have been built by Elizabeth, and is practically an integral part of London over the Border, with long monotonous streets of small houses. Of the many mansions once occupied by wealthy merchants, the sixteenth-century Eastbury House, recently restored by its owner, is an isolated example, and is locally known as the 'Gunpowder House,' because of an unfounded tradition that the conspirators in the Guy Fawkes plot watched from it for the blowing-up of the Houses of Parliament, or, according to another version of the same legend, Lord Mounteagle there received the letter which enabled him to frustrate the iniquitous scheme.

Dagenham

The rapidly growing village of Dagenham, that will doubtless soon become a town, set in the midst of market-gardens in the low-lying districts east of Barking, retains far more than the latter the rural appearance it presented when it was part of the extensive abbey demesne. The ancient church, in spite of much necessary rebuilding, retains a fine piscina that was long bricked up, and other ancient relics, including an altar-slab bearing the marks symbolical of the Redeemer's wounds, and the tomb of Sir Thomas Ursuyk, who died in 1470, on which are effigies of himself, his wife, and their thirteen children.

Subject as it has been from the earliest historic times to inundation from the Thames, Dagenham has been from the first intimately associated with engineering enterprise. Discoveries were made in the early eighteenth century of what was at first taken for a submerged forest, but on examination proved to be relics of wooden embankments that were probably existing in pre-Roman times. In 1376 the breaking down of the banks of the Thames at Dagenham flooded the village and the whole neighbourhood, involving so heavy a loss to the Abbey of Barking that the then abbess had to appeal to King Edward I. for exemption from a payment due to him. How the mischief then done was repaired there is no evidence to show, but there are many allusions in contemporary records to later occurrences of a similar kind, all of which, however, sink into insignificance before the great calamity of December 17, 1707, when in a violent storm a breach four hundred feet wide was made in the Thames embankment, and one thousand acres were submerged. Many attempts were made to stop the gap, but it was not until 1715 that anything like success was achieved. At that date Captain Perry undertook the arduous task, and five years later he had reclaimed all but a comparatively small portion of the lost lands, the so-called Dagenham Breach or Dagenham Lake, a picturesque sheet of water much resorted to by anglers, being all that is now left to keep alive the memory of the famous disaster. About 1884 a company was formed to transform this lake into a dock, but fortunately, perhaps, for those who prefer beauty to utility, the enterprise failed for want of funds. Meanwhile Dagenham Breach had become associated with an institution still dear to the hearts of politicians—the annual ministerial whitebait dinner—for it was in a cottage on its banks belonging to Sir John Preston, M.P. for Dover, and president of the committee for inspecting the embankment at Dagenham, that that dinner was first eaten. In its inception a mere gathering of friends who met to enjoy the country air and to eat freshly caught whitebait in each other's company, the meeting gradually grew in importance as time went on, William Pitt having been often one of the guests. Later, the distance from town was found too great for ministers and city magnates, so it was transferred to Greenwich, where, since the death of Sir John Preston, the old Dagenham traditions have been religiously maintained.

Barking Creek

The low-lying, marshy districts near Barking Creek, where the Roding flows into the Thames, and those between Dagenham and Woolwich, have unfortunately lost nearly all the country charm which distinguished them at the time of Sir John Preston, but the beautiful water highway intersecting them, that is associated with so many thrilling memories, and has been the scene of so many notable historic pageants, will ever lend to them a strong element of the picturesque. Constant changes in the tides, with never-ending variations in the traffic, dainty pleasure-craft, heavily laden barges, crowded steamers, and busy tugs succeeding each other in an unbroken procession, or momentarily forming picturesque groups to which the rarely absent mist and fog give an effective touch of mystery, render every reach of the Lower Thames full of inspiration to the artist. Even at Woolwich itself, one half of which is on the north and the other on the south of the river, there is still much that is attractive, in spite of the fact that the town is nearly everywhere divided from the water by the long lines of the dockyard and arsenal, and that strength and utility rather than beauty of structure are the distinguishing characteristics of those two centres of activity.

Woolwich