Europe’s biggest council estate sits on the outskirts of London and owes its existence, at least in part, to the First World War.
Becontree council estate is nestled between Barking and Dagenham. Sprawling across four square miles and consisting of 27,000 homes, the estate is almost like a town within a town, complete with shops restaurant and a train station.
The genesis of the estate came out of Prime Minister Lloyd George’s pledge in 1919 to build homes “fit for heroes” following the horrors of the Great War.
The first homes were built in 1921, with a purpose-built railway station also being established to allow transportation of goods from the dockyards of the river Thames.
Darren Rodwell, leader of Barking and Dagenham Council and lifelong Becontree resident, reflects: “We talk about the 15-minute community – that’s what this was, but 100 years ago.
“None of this is new. All we’re doing [today] is going back to what people realised was important back then.”
The homes were luxurious by the standards of the time, with many of the first residents moving out of East London slums away from “disease and plague”.
Speaking in 2019, Becontree resident Peter Fisher, who moved to the estate in 1926 recalled his memories of relocating to the BBC.
He said: “Those who watched the construction of Becontree were immediately filled with hope of a new world.
“These people watched with wonder and excitement as a new era – of luscious homes that had running water, indoor toilets and private gardens was created. For them, the days of slumming it in the East End were over.”
Peter reflects on the moment his mother told him about the move out of the slums to comparable luxury.
He added: “My parents, my four brothers and I moved from a two-bedroom flat in Whitechapel to Chitty’s Lane in 1926. It was a few doors down from number 26 – the first house built in Becontree.
“Our house was gigantic – it had a big kitchen, a well-kept garden that ran all the way around the back and the front. I was the king of the castle. As far as my mum was concerned, it was heaven – though she had difficulty making a house look a home with our somewhat meagre possessions.
“She loved having the simplest of things – like kitchen cupboards and a stove. She’d never let me open the fruit cupboard in case I got dirt on it.”
As the years went by, living standards declined and an estate that was once a desirable social upgrade became known as “Corned Beef City” by historians and commentators – a reference to the staple diet of its residents in the post-Second World War period.
Alexander McDonald, who lived on the estate from 1921 until he was 81, wrote in his memoirs that he had never heard it referred to by that name.
He said: “I agree that there were some very poor people [living there] but there were many more men who had jobs to go to.”
Nowadays, the estate, like every part of London is almost unrecognisable from the 1920s. What was once a white working-class area is now the epitome of London’s melting pot of cultures, something that Mr Rodwell believes is Becontree’s greatest strengths.
He said: “Diversity has brought life back into the Becontree,” he says. “My neighbours are Ghanaian, next door is a Lithuanian, then an English family, then a Romanian family. It’s fantastic. And that sense of community is still there. What I see growing here again is a new birth of community.”
The area like many parts of London is blighted by deprivation, with 50% of the children who call the estate home living in poverty according to Mr Rodwell, but statistics tell just one story.
The centenary celebrations for the estate in 2021 showed an area bursting with local pride, a festival of arts, music and architecture all put on to demonstrate the love of the residents for the place they call home and to celebrate an estate that has charted the changes in Britain throughout the Elizabethan age.
