please empty your brain below
Good to see my old manor featured...

Barking Station - I agree with Nairn, it's a fantastic, airy modern building (supposedly heavily influenced by the pricipal railway station in Rome, Termini, but on a much smaller scale) - but, after years of heavy vandalism (when the windows facing onto the street were, more often than not, smashed, boarded up, or covered with graffiti), came the years of insensitive filling in.. Would be great to see it restored to something like its original state.

Time for a pedantic correction: the Fiddlers - as mentioned in at least one of Pete N Dud's Dagenham Dialogues - was for a short period known as the Hustlers (very much snooker-themed), not the Hustle.

It strikes me how very much LESS bleak both the centre of Barking and of Dagenham Village are today than they were 25 or 30 years ago...

Dominic H | 11.11.14 - 7:40 a.m. | #

I can see the Barking/Termini thing, now it's mentioned. I used to live there in the late 80's and always rather liked using the station. Though it does look a bit of a bazaar now. Sad to hear about the Dagenham clearances.

David | 11.11.14 - 9:52 a.m. | #

Couldn't do it yesterday but I've just looked up CUV 217C, the registration of the Routemaster that appears on the cover of the book.
As well as finding that the bus itself still exists, as part of the Arriva Heritage Fleet (I thought the number seemed familiar, from the RM 60 event), it also turned out it has been 'famous' enough to have had various diecast reproductions modelled upon it.

RogerW | 11.11.14 - 11:42 a.m. | #

Years ago the personnel officer from my work left to set up a shop in Barking. A pet shop. You can probably guess what she called it...

RogerW | 11.11.14 - 11:46 a.m. | #

I once had the pleasure of being in the same Modern Greek class as a civil servant whose current job was to produce model regulations regarding "dog litter". As well as asking us our preference from various possible appropriate signs, he was very proud that his work would be tested first in Barking.

JeremyB | 11.11.14 - 12:50 p.m. | #

I've been to the Cross Keys pub it does not sale bitter only lager and Guinness!

| 11.11.14 - 12:59 p.m. | #

Fascinating posts, thank you.

Harry | 11.11.14 - 6:52 p.m. | #

I live just down the road from Fiddler's roundabout, which no longer has a Fiddlers, or a roundabout.

Fiddler's was closed after more than a few failed attempts to stop the drug dealing inside it. I was a good boy so all my youthful drinking was in either the Ship, or Travellers.

Ah, happy days, three pubs and two schools leading to the sort of tribalism you might suspect happened.

Brian Kellett | Homepage | 11.11.14 - 7:38 p.m. | #

One road junction, three big pubs... they really don't build communities like that any more.

Thanks for all the local updates, everyone!
I've always thought B&D gets less than its fair share of time in the spotlight, so it's good to be able to redress the balance sometimes.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.11.14 - 8:30 p.m. | #

The current RM 2217 is not the original bus - when it was built it carried body B 2217 with sub-frames A & B also numbered 2217.

However when a bus was overhauled at Aldenham it was dismantled, the bodies took longer to overhaul than the sub-frames, what left Aldenham was a collection of parts called RM 2217 or whatever.

If the book was published in 1966 then this is the original RM 2217, but during overhaul at Aldenham in 1968 bodies and sub-frames all got swapped around, so RM 2217 carries body B 2139, no idea what sub-frames were fitted, but this is what left Aldenham as 'RM 2217', the body B 2217 was fitted to what left Aldenham as 'RM 1948' (ALD948B), which was sold to Reading Mainline in November 1995, and exported to Poland in the early naughties - so it may still exist.

Only a handful of RM still carry the bodies they were built with.

| 11.11.14 - 9:18 p.m. | #

RogerW, ironically in the 1911 Census, my Maternal Great Grandfather ran a Pet Shop in Back Lane, Barking.

fat_boy_pete | 11.11.14 - 10:33 p.m. | #

Somewhere I have some old photographs of the Fiddlers area just after the pubs were built, but before much else was. I'll have to dig them out.

You were not temped to try the pie and mash there DG? It is one of the best in London. IMHO anyway.

David | Homepage | 12.11.14 - 9:49 a.m. | #

Thank you for introducing me to the life & work of Ian Nairn. I've since watched some of his programmes and the documentary about him. An intriguing fella - the like of which I cannot recall.

Frank F | 12.11.14 - 12:06 p.m. | #











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