Administrative Boundary of Barking and Dagenham

About Barking and Dagenham

Barking and Dagenham is a London borough in east London, England. Covering approximately 36 square kilometres on the north bank of the Thames east of the City of London, the borough had a population of approximately 220,000 at the 2021 Census. One of the most historically layered of London's outer boroughs, Barking and Dagenham combines the ruins of one of the greatest Saxon abbeys in England with the legacy of the largest motor manufacturing complex ever built in Britain, and today stands as one of the most ethnically diverse and rapidly changing communities in Greater London. Barking Abbey Barking Abbey, founded around 666 AD by St Erkenwald, Bishop of London, was one of the wealthiest and most powerful Benedictine nunneries in medieval England. For nearly a millennium, Barking Abbey ranked among the most important religious houses in the country — its abbesses were some of the most powerful women in medieval English society, able to summon knights to battle and possessing extensive landholdings across Essex. King William the Conqueror is believed to have stayed at Barking Abbey immediately after the Conquest while the Tower of London was under construction, using it as his royal lodging. The abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539, and the majority of the buildings were dismantled for building materials. The surviving Curfew Tower (also called the Fire Bell Gate) is a substantial medieval structure with a vaulted passageway, and the archaeological remains of the abbey church — uncovered in the 20th century — can be seen in the grounds beside the parish Church of St Margaret, Barking. The Ford Dagenham Plant The Ford Motor Company's Dagenham manufacturing complex, opened in 1931 on a vast area of former marshland beside the Thames, was for decades one of the largest and most productive automobile manufacturing plants in the world — at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s employing approximately 40,000 workers and producing a complete vehicle every minute. Ford Dagenham was the manufacturing heart of the British motor industry, building the Ford Popular, Anglia, Cortina, Escort, and many other models that defined everyday British motoring. The plant's workforce of predominantly white working-class men became one of the emblematic communities of 20th-century industrial Britain, and the 1968 strike by female machinists demanding equal pay — which directly inspired the Equal Pay Act 1970 — is one of the most celebrated episodes in British labour history, commemorated in the 2010 film Made in Dagenham. Car production at Dagenham ended in 2002, but the site continues to operate as Ford's major European engine manufacturing facility. Population and Demographics The 2021 Census recorded approximately 220,000 residents. Barking and Dagenham is one of London's most ethnically diverse boroughs: only approximately 35% White British — one of the lowest proportions of any London borough — with large Black African, Black Caribbean, South Asian (particularly Bangladeshi), and mixed-heritage communities. The borough has experienced rapid demographic change since the 2000s, transforming from one of the most homogeneous white working-class communities in London to one of its most diverse. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of Barking and Dagenham London Borough is available for free download in GeoJSON and KML formats, sourced from the ONS Open Geography Portal (Crown copyright 2024). Compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, and Google Earth, the dataset supports Saxon heritage mapping, industrial legacy analysis, demographic research, riverside development planning, and equal pay history documentation across the Barking and Dagenham local authority area.

📍 Administrative boundary of Barking and Dagenham county