Thames View
Thames View, Barking & Dagenham
A self-contained neighbourhood trapped between Barking and Barking Riverside – with no Thames view from ground level
This was part of the marshland of Eastbury Level until the mid-1950s, when Barking borough council began building over 2,000 homes using piles and rafts for the concrete foundations. The scheme included terraced housing, blocks of flats, maisonettes, a shopping centre and other amenities.
The main thoroughfare was named after Norman Bastable, Barking’s housing officer and chief public health inspector, who played a prominent part in the estate’s development. Other streets were also named after local officials.
Thames View county infants school opened on Bastable Avenue in 1957. Now simply called Thames View Infants, its distinctive architectural feature is a prominent clock tower on what was originally the school keeper’s house. Also on Bastable Avenue, Christ Church was built in 1958–9 as a chapel of ease to St Patrick’s Barking.
The estate was enlarged in the late 1960s, and Thames View junior school opened in 1968.
From the late 1990s Thames View was the subject of a Sure Start initiative aiming to promote the physical, intellectual and social development of babies and young children. Its organisers commented, “The estate itself is isolated, the community fragmented, with little access to communal facilities. Services are basic, educational attainment poor, life chances limited.”
Newlands Park – the only open play area on the estate – was refurbished in 2001 as part of the lottery-funded A13 Artscape project. On Bastable Avenue the Sue Bramley centre now co-ordinates the provision of a wide range of welfare services and young children’s educational programmes. The neighbouring Thames View health centre opened in 2005.
In 2011–13 houses and four blocks of flats at the eastern end of the Thames View estate were demolished and 276 new affordable homes were built, mostly terraced townhouses.
To the south and east of Thames View, a vast brownfield site is being redeveloped as Barking Riverside. Back when the concept was called Barking Reach things began with the construction of the Great Fleete estate, which was soon followed by schemes such as Meadowland and City East.
Established in 2018, the Thames Ward Community Project is the latest initiative aiming to improve residents’ health outcomes, quality of life, skills and job opportunities.
At the last census just under 40 per cent of the estate’s residents were white British. By far the most significant other ethnic group was of black African heritage. Relatively few were of Asian or black Caribbean descent. In recent years the council has placed a number of refugee and asylum seeking families here.
Postcode area: Barking, IG11