Creekmouth Village

A Memory of Barking.

I was born in Creekmouth Village in 1952. The village was at the end of River Road at the confluence of the River Roding and The Thames.
The village consisted (in latter years) of 50 Victorian style cottages, 2 up 2 down with outside toilets and no bathrooms. The original few cottages housed local fishermen but after the 1850s, when John Bennett Lawes opened his fertiliser & chemical factory there, most of the cottages housed his workers.
I was just a baby when the Great Flood of 1953 swamped the cottages. By 1956 most of the residents had moved to the newly built Thames View Estate (The View, if you lived there). I grew up, with my sisters, in Maybury Road and in 1972 married my long term boyfriend, Dave Williams, from Stanley Avenue. My eldest sister lived, collectively, at Maybury Road, Alderman Avenue, Endeavour Way, Chelmer Crescent and, finally, Stanley Avenue before moving to Ireland in later life. My next sister lived, for several years, in Sugden Way but my youngest sister moved to The Isle of Dogs.
The View was a wonderful place to grow up; a tight community (especially The Creekers), friends were made for life and many marriages were made from the youth club days.
Sadly, Barking and Thames View Estate memories of my childhood and youth are vastly different from the area today but life evolves and changes, I suppose.

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