Becontree
Encyclopedia : B : BE : BEC : Becontree
Becontree ['bɛkəntri] is a place in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham in East London, 11.4 miles (18.3 km) east north-east of Charing Cross.
Becontree estate
The area was developed as a large council estate of 27,000 homes between 1921 and 1932 by the London County Council intended as "homes for heroes" after the World War I. With a population of over 100,000 it remains the largest public housing development in the world. It is named after the ancient Becontree Hundred which historically covered the area.
The very first house completed in Chittys Lane is recognisable by a blue council plate embedded in the wall. Parallel to Chittys Lane runs Valence Avenue which is wider than the rest of the streets in the district. This is because a temporary railway ran down the centre of the avenue during the construction of the estate. The estate was built by London County Council to rehouse people from London's East End, due to slum clearance. At its completion in the mid 1930s it was the largest council house scheme in Europe.
At the time everyone marvelled at having indoor toilets and a private garden although the sash windows were extremely draughty, there was no insulation in the attics, and during the winter months very few people could afford enough coal to heat the bedrooms. One curious clause in the contract of tenancy stipulated that children born to parents living in Dagenham could not be housed on the estate themselves when the time came for them to establish their own homes.
Unfortunately, over the 15 year period of the building of the estate, the school-aged population rose rapidly to 25,000 while there were only 4 secondary schools nearby: 3 in Chadwell Heath and 1 at Becontree Heath, which meant that many children could not attend school. The first primary school to be built was "Green Lane" in 1923, renamed in 1953 "Henry Green" after the first headmaster.
Special features
One of the main social improvements in the construction of the new estate was to have large public houses few and far between compared with smaller ones almost every hundred yards in the poorer quarters of London. Curiously, there is no "town centre" as is generally understood in a community.
Nearest places:
Nearest tube stations: Nearest railway stations:External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.