Abbey Lodge - East Street, by Simone Panayi

Many Barking residents will remember that before Sam99’s, 23-25 East Street hosted Woolworths - a stalwart of high streets across the country. The American, Frank Woolworth, whose ancestors were from Woolley in Cambridgeshire, founded the British branch of FW Woolworths, noting in his diary, ‘I believe that a good penny and sixpence store, run by a live Yankee, would create a storm here...’ The first store opened in Liverpool (where he had first docked) in November 1909 and the last closed in January 2009. After more than a hundred years of inflation, it is of no surprise, and actually apt that a Woolworth's penny store (influenced by the Penny Bazaars) has become a 99p store - Sam's is a very fitting replacement. For further information on the history of Woolworths see www.woolworthsmuseum.co.uk.

The building plans for 13-27 East Street – a row of three-story buildings with distinctive pilasters (imitation columns) - were submitted by FW Woolworth & Co, in 1927, with signage for a double shop front described as, ‘Wood Fascia and cornice etc. Painted our standard red colour [with] giltwood [gold] letters…’ The original store-front sign also proudly advertised Woolworths not as a 1d and 6d store as originally suggested but, slightly more expensive: ‘3d and 6d stores’… The original plans and early photographs of the store are available to view at Barking and Dagenham's Archives.

Another interesting website, www.wooliesbuildings.wordpress.co.uk, describes the Barking store as number 328 of over 800 opened in Britain and Ireland in total, and one of 50 built during 1928. In East Street the new buildings were part of a road-widening scheme and improvements to the high street.

Modernist town planners aimed to bring a row of incongruous nineteenth century homes and low-rise shops into the new century and literarily in line with the row 1-11 East Street – an earlier development, approved in 1906, and built by United Westminster Charities who had purchased the Bull Inn, and surrounding buildings with permission of King Charles I in 1636. You can still see the charity’s crest, carved into the stonework of these three storey buildings, with stores on the ground floor and residences above. The Bull Pub itself was rebuilt in 1925, as East Street transformed into a modern high-street, between the World Wars...

Historical resources, found in the Archives and Local Studies Library at Valence, including Joseph Frogley’s invaluable manuscript from the early 1900s, have revealed that before the impressive Woolworths store was built, there was a, ‘long – moderate sized bricked house of one storey’ on East Street called Abbey Lodge. ‘Before that there was, 'a butcher’s shop and sheds’, but during the 1850s Doctor Davidson built a residence there which was occupied by medical practitioners (perhaps as a surgery) until the early twentieth century. The most notable residents of the Lodge were, quite coincidently, the Mason family - who were far from dull!

Doctor Hugh Herbert Mason and his wife Susanna, were both from The Midlands and yet were pro-active residents, who made significant contributions to Barking society in the Victorian period. Doctor Mason was living at Abbey Lodge from around 1874. He ran the Provident Dispensary on the Broadway, which in the days before the NHS, was supported by subscriptions and thus enabled the poor to receive medical advice and medicines cheaply. He was also a Factory Surgeon and Medical Officer for the local Poor Law Union. In September 1878 The Essex Times reported that Dr Mason was called to Creekmouth to assist with the survivors brought there after the Princess Alice Steamship disaster, when around 650 lives were lost, in this Thames tragedy!

Local historian Herbert Lockwood described Doctor Mason as, a striking man ‘… a good six feet in height with flowing sandy beard [and] a liberal of advanced views’. He was known locally to be a ‘radical’ or 'progressive’, and an ally of the working classes - he petitioned for a free library in Barking and became the first chairman of the new library committee .He was a member of the local board (an early form of the town council) and was the chair of the burial board - who managed the expansion of St Margaret’s graveyard to Rippleside Cemetery, which opened in 1886. Doctor Mason was also elected to the county council in 1892 and 1895.

Susanna married Hugh in 1887 and gave birth to a daughter, Marian, in 1889, and a son, Edward, a year later, but was not confined to a domestic role as a Victorian ‘angel of the house’ - she served on the Barking Burial Board with her husband and also the new School Board from 1892 which was overseeing the building of the first Barking Board School – The Park, now known as Gascoigne Primary. More significantly, Harry Dawson confirmed to the Town Clerk, in 1943, that, Susanna Mason was the first female town councillor, elected to the newly formed Urban District Council in 1894. Hugh Mason had failed to win his ward, but he was later co-opted to the chair by the public – mainly by his trade unionist supporters from Beckton Gas Works…

This remarkable couple challenged the local establishment at every turn (supported by those less fortunate than themselves) and fought to improve the conditions of the poor, including the dire unemployment problem, which peaked in 1894. Maybe it was their high-profile activism which led to a hoax bomb being, 'discovered on the doorstep' of their East Street home in May 1894. This disturbing event was followed by personal tragedy in 1896, when they lost their young daughter Marian. Her brief life is commemorated in a beautiful stained-glass window - one of a series donated by Susan Mason - in Rippleside Chapel, which was designed by industrious borough architect Charles Dawson in 1886, at the behest of the Burial Board. The sad ending to this story which possibly explains Susanna’s departure from Barking in 1903 and her husband’s several months later, sadly reminds us of the high mortality rate at that time, particularly among children. Marian’s parents dedicated themselves to improving the lives of the poorer folk of Barking, but tragically were unable to save their only daughter, who remains with us in Barking and is lovingly remembered at Rippleside Chapel of Rest.

To discover more about Barking Town's local history visit LBBD’s Archives and Local Studies Library at Valence House Museum, Dagenham.