VILLAGE TO TOWN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 266, 9 November 1932, Page 9

VILLAGE TO TOWN.

ENGLISH PHENOMENON. Official census figures, for Essex, recently published, show that Dagenham has grown from a parish of 9127 people in 1921 to a town with a population of 89,302 in 1931—an increase of 80,235 (says the "Daily Mail"). There, where avenues of trim, red houses have sprung up like mushrooms, people with only seven or eight years' residence to their credit are classed among the oldest inhabitants. One woman who seven years ago was living in Walworth, S.E., said that when she and her husband went to live in Dagenham their regular evening walk was to a farm a few hundreds yards down the road. Now this woman's house is just one in a long etreet, and there is a grocer's shop where the cow byres used to stand. The great housing echeme of the London County Council is chiefly respond sible for the transformation. Nearly 15,000 houses, uniformly email, but built in 85 different styles, have been erected, and more are .being built. Most of the inhabitants are people who have moved out from London, but now that *a ; new motor ear works and other factories have opened in the district a strong North Country element is growing up.