Barking's Public Offices
Of the borough’s listed buildings, the grade II* Barking Public Offices, also known as ‘Barking Magistrate’s Court’, is the only one with Victorian origins and remains one of the most imposing buildings in Barking and Dagenham. The imminent borough architect, Charles James Dawson, submitted its plans in July 1891 and Thomas W Glenny laid the foundation stone in 1893, underneath which, were placed: copies of a national and local newspaper, The Essex Times periodical and three silver coins. It cost £15,085 to build and was opened in October 1894, by philanthropist Mr J. Passmore Edwards, who also donated a thousand books to the library within. C.J. Dawson presented Mr Edwards with a silver, engraved, master key to the building. As well as public offices and library it also included a mortuary, stabling, sheds, and a fire station (at the back). 
The Fire Brigade decorated the route from the station with bunting, and along with the Ambulance Brigade formed a guard of honour, for the opening ceremony.
All this pomp promoted the start of a new era for Barking, as became an ‘Urban District Council’ in 1894 too, bringing various Barking Boards and the parish’s vestry power ck under the control of one overseer – the council... Local authority in Barking began with the powers of the Abbess, the first being St Ethelburga. Each mother of the Abbey controlled the ‘manor’, which originally lay between the Roding and Beam rivers and north of the Thames through Ilford to the forest boundary (there is no solid evidence of where that was), from AD 666. Dagenham parish separated from Barking & Ilford at some point after the Doomsday Book was written and before the end of the thirteenth century, in line with the establishing of St Peter & St Paul’s parish church. These local powers were absorbed by the King (after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the Abbey) and later became the role of the secular ‘Lord of The Manor’, from 1628, the first of these being Sir Thomas Fanshawe. Queen Elizabeth I addressed her manorial responsibilities to Barking by commissioning the Leet House (also known as the Tudor Market Hall) – explained in Sue Hamilton’s previous article on this topic.
According to J E Oxley, local governance had probably passed almost exclusively to the vestry (of the Parish Church – St Margaret’s) by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Rapid urbanisation and population growth through the Victorian era however, put enormous pressure on urban parish vestries, particularly on health and welfare services. Provision for the poor had already been removed from vestries by the Poor Law of 1834 and a separate Board of Health was created 1853-5 and from 1875. Barking eventually established a Town Board in 1882 - they immediately authorised a sewerage system for the Town Ward. A Burial Board followed in 1884 – who planned the Rippleside Cemetery as an extension of the graveyard.
An outbreak of infectious diseases in 1885 led to the hasty erection of an isolation tent and eventually a hospital for those suffering infectious diseases such as Scarlet Fever, Typhoid Fever and Smallpox.
This was built on Upney Meadow, close to Upney Lane in 1893 and became Upney Hospital - many local babies would be born there in the twentieth century and today it is the site of a community hospital.
The necessary new cemetery opened in 1886. A School Board was established in 1889 and the first free Barking Board School, Gascoigne, opened in 1891. In 1893 the Town Board took over the Quay and built a pumping station and water-tower. That year culminated in the completion of the new Public Offices, which became known as the Town Hall.
The Town Board and most other local Boards combined to form the Urban District Council, who met for the first time, in the new building, in 1895. 
Susanna Mason, the first female councillor was elected that year and her (unelected) husband Doctor Hugh Herbert Mason became the first Chairman of the UDC - he was said to be the choice of local trade unionists, as a trusted medical officer, factory surgeon, and a known ‘radical’. Both he and his wife had previously served on the Burial Board and Susanna was also a member of the School Board and regular visitor to Gascoigne school, even during periods of fever, as documented by the school logbook. Tragically their eldest child and only daughter, Marian, shockingly succumbed to ‘croup’ at the age of seven, in 1896, and the local paper described how, ‘the parents were wonderfully fond of their child.’
This devotion was evident in Mrs Mason’s request to fund a set of stained-glass windows, to be designed and fitted in the new Rippleside Chapel, in Marian’s memory. One is dedicated to the child and features a beautiful likeness of Marian, it can still be seen there today. 
She is buried in an unmarked grave, close to the chapel, probably purchased for the family, but sadly after all their dedication to Barking, they moved back to the midlands, maybe due to this huge sorrow… Marian’s grave is next to that of C.J. Dawson – the architect of the Public Offices, Rippleside Chapel, the original Gascoigne School, North Street (Northbury) School and many other schools and significant buildings in the borough.
Dawson and his wife Hannah had fifteen children, they also experienced tragedy - they lost four sons, one as a child and three as young men, two were casualties of World War I. Dawson a talented artist and skilled architect was appointed to the Town Board in 1883, initially as a surveyor, and he went on to design more than twenty buildings for the borough over 54 years of service. At his funeral, in 1933, the Vicar described him as, ‘marked by [his] consideration for others, by sterling integrity and by incomparable devotion to duty and to work’. He was renowned for his generosity and kindness and considered, ‘one of the greatest and most highly esteemed of Barking’s citizens’!
The UDC took over the Burial Board in 1897 and opened Barking Park and Swimming Baths (which were situated behind the old Town Hall and are marked by the foundation stone still) in 1898-9. The town’s electricity supply and a tram way service followed - Barking was a trail blazer with both these new innovations.
During World War One, local recruits signed up at The Town Hall, at that point it was known as the ‘Clockhouse’. Dawson’s distinctive four-faced clock and weathervane still grace the building and it is also worth looking for the engraved dates, globe lamps and gabled windows with ‘ogee heads’.
The building was once again centre of attention in 1931, when the Town was granted a royal charter and visited by Queen Elizabeth II’s father, Prince George. By this time however, a new, bigger, town hall was being planned. The outbreak of the second war delayed this project, and it was eventually completed in 1957. Dawson’s building, after serving as a town hall for over sixty years, was to get a new role as a magistrate’s court, which lasted another fifty years... More about that, in the next article on Law and Order…
Thank you as always to the LBBD Archives for most of these photos.