NEW TOWN JOINS LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20762, 3 January 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

NEW TOWN JOINS LONDON.

100,000 INHABITANTS. A new town has stretched out its hands and touched London. Dagenham, which ten years ago was an Essex village, isolated in the flat marsh and pasture stretching toward Tilbury, has become London's newest suburb, and is growing faster than any other. Ten years ago the parish of Dagenham had a population of 5000 inhabitants scattered over flat wastes and river banks in straggling cottages and farms. To-day it has a population of nearly 100,000, and grows almost from hour to hour. Since 1920, 25,000 new homes have been built there. Dagenham, which began as a working man's town, has become a perfect democratic suburb. Its wide streets, long gabled houses, prim little gardens, and pavements bright with busy shops have an air of cheerful prosperity. Two cinemas and seven churches have appeared. Trains run to the city and omnibuses to Piccadilly, for Dagenham, like every selfrespecting suburb, is a settlement of homes only; its inhabitants do thoir work elsewhere.

Between the tiled roofs and neat gardens ono occasionally has a glimpse of the grey river flats that the tidy young suburb has not yet overlaid.

But they will disappear; already a great motor factory is rising on the river bank, and the builders' hammers tap all day on new houses and in new streets.