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Dwellings
provided
Registered Applicants
January 1960 - Waiting List 2,383
December 1960 -Waiting List 2,456
During the fifteen years since the end of the second world
war, the Council has built 3,437 permanent dwellings.
This is an average of 229 per annum. A similar number will
be necessary for the next fifteen years to provide for redevelopment
and overcrowding. With every available piece of land in the
Borough accounted for, it would seem inevitable for our central
area densities to be increased.
The Council has already planned for such a redevelopment
which, together with the clearance of a further 2,200 dwellings
in the 75 acres of the Gascoigne area, will mean the ultimate
rebuilding of what once constituted the old Barking Town area.
The houses to be cleared are small four room type dwellings
in the main, now obsolescent and defective. They are near and
on the fringe of the heart of the town, and their replacement will
provide a challenge to the planners and architects.
The economics of this can arouse dismay but at the same
time provide the Council with the interesting problem of rebuilding
to a new design.
Much slum clearance will be necessary in addition to what
has already been accomplished.
The future children of Barking will judge us not in terms of
finance, nor of administration, but only in terms of what we build.
We must not bequeath a dreary architectural legacy to posterity.
THAMES VIEW ESTATE
"Finis" was written to the creation of this small new town of
2,112 dwellings constructed by the Council on a low-lying site
regarded for many years as unsuitable for building, and resisted
by the planners for several years.
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