#Heritage Treasures Day

Barking Town Centre’s #heritagetreasures are being celebrated in 2021, with the help of National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The public space at the Curfew Tower – gateway to historic Barking (St Margaret’s Church, Barking’s Abbey ruins and its old Quay) is being improved and a new, accessible model of the seventh century Barking Abbey installed at this site.

East Street, the early twentieth century high street, opposite the medieval tower and abbey ruins has funding for improvements to the traditional buildings and shopfronts. The Abbey and Barking Town Centre Conservation Area Appraisal has been updated too.

The other #heritagetreasures to revere are the Heritage Volunteers who have been researching the historic buildings and hidden heritage of Barking Town Centre for the last eighteen months. They have contiuned their work through the pandemic, spinning their research into golden tales about Barking’s past. These have appeared in the local newspaper as well as on the project website. While the local LBBD Archives were closed our enthusiastic volunteers consolidated their research, wrote articles and made sound recordings of their stories for the borough’s fitness app ‘Street Tag’ - which in collaboration with ‘Pent To Print’ will create a new heritage trail for local walkers - the first part of a borough wide storytelling trail which will launch this Spring.

We managed to undertake two socially distanced tours of Barking Town Centre during the summer, which inspired further research and more articles, although the Christmas Party was replaced with a virtual Christmas Quiz in 2020. Over the last year the team have developed their digital skills and methods of online research, moving from their base at the local Archives to Zoom and then Teams, as they made the most of time spent at home during the pandemic – continuing to uncover more heritage stories to treasure, from Barking’s past.