Hummed To Sleep By A Factory

A Memory of Dagenham.

We used to live on what was called The Avenues on the Rylands estate. This was situated behind the Princess shopping parade, so called after the name of the local flea pit where all the kids went to Saturday morning pictures. It later became the Princess bowling alley. It was located on the old A13 New Rd opposite the road that led to the main entrances to Fords.  The estate was originally built for the white-collared Ford workers plus foremen and was one of the few private estates in Dagenham. It sounds almost posh now, but believe me it wasn't. The blue-collared workers tended to live on the massive council Becontree estate that Dagenham was also famous for (that and the Dagenham Girl Pipers of course). My dad must have been one of the few dads who wasn't an Irish Catholic (although my mum was) and who didn't work in Fords. But the majority of my mate's dads were and did.  During the weekdays at 12 noon the factory would sound a really loud air raid siren (the war had been over 15 years by now) which would signal the start of the day shift's lunch break and then again at 1 o'clock to signal its end. The factory was massive, going back from the A13 nearly a mile deep till it reached the Thames. It's length was even more impressive starting just after Dagenham meets Barking and running the entire width of what was a really large town. At the time it had more or less the same population as Newcastle.  It actually ran out of Dagenham and just into Rainham. At either end of the factory is where they stored all the new cars waiting to be transported to dealers up and down the country. Row after row after row of gleaming new Ford Anglias, Cortinas, Corsairs etc. The factory was so big and output so massive, it even had its own foundry for smelting the steel it needed for production.  Ships trawled down the length of England from the North East to the docks on the Thames behind Fords, carrying the coal needed to help run the furnaces. This was later supplemented by gas, with the factory having its very own and massive gasometer. Even today I remember the bang it made when they finally had no use for it anymore and blew it up. Although Fords was confined to what was the whole southern boundary of Dagenham, it was very much the at the centre of everything about the town. So many people worked there. The majority of boys in my old primary school class ended up on the production line or taking up apprenticeships. So many other businesses relied on Fords to make a living supplying component parts etc.  And now it's virtually all gone. Killed by almost annual worker strikes and the harsh realities of the modern world and globalisation. Viewed from the new A13 which now runs through what used to be the middle of its throbbing industrial heart, it's become like a ghost town. Funny simile to use for me really, as it was the very gentle throb the factory used to make at night that soothed this young boy's imagination after lights went out at home and my young mind turned to all things ghoulish coming to get me in my bed. "Listen to the sound of Fords", my dad used to say, when I couldn't get  to sleep. "If you're very quiet you can hear it." And you could. Like the sound of a retreating aeroplane way off in the distance, it would sing this little boy off to sleep with its gentle lullaby.