Barking & Dagenham

History and heritage

Home to the ruins of Barking Abbey, founded in 666 AD, alongside Eastbury Manor House, one of London’s last remaining Tudor houses, and the moated Valence House.

Regeneration and growth

Barking Riverside is one of Europe’s largest urban renewal projects, bringing new eco-friendly housing, a new Overground station, and community spaces to the borough.

Parks and nature

Award-winning green spaces include Eastbrookend Country Park, Mayesbrook Park, and The Chase Nature Reserve, home to over 200 species of birds.

Local highlights

A few of the places that make Barking & Dagenham such an interesting part of London.

Eastbury Manor House

A National Trust-managed Elizabethan house with original turrets, rare 17th-century chamber paintings, and a walled garden. One of London’s last surviving Tudor manor houses, open for tours and events.

Barking Abbey ruins

The remains of a royal monastery founded in 666 AD, once one of the most powerful female religious communities in England. The medieval Curfew Tower and St Margaret’s Church still stand on the site.

Valence House Museum

A moated manor house turned museum, with nearly 30,000 items documenting the history of Barking and Dagenham from prehistoric times to the present day. Recognised by The Guardian as one of London’s best free attractions.

The Broadway Theatre, Barking

A popular cultural venue in the heart of Barking town centre, hosting a year-round programme of plays, musicals, comedy, dance, and community events.

Eastbrookend Country Park

A Green Flag award-winning country park with open grassland, lakes, marshes, and woodland, plus a discovery centre offering nature walks and family-friendly activities.

Property in Barking & Dagenham

Barking & Dagenham has one of the most affordable property markets in London, with a housing stock shaped by its industrial heritage and large-scale 20th-century estate building. You will find everything from the iconic Becontree estate — the largest public housing estate in the world — to Victorian terraces around Barking town centre and new-build developments at Barking Riverside, giving the borough a growing range of options for buyers, renters, and investors.

A defining feature of the borough’s appeal is the scale of regeneration underway. Barking Riverside is one of the largest urban renewal projects in Europe, delivering thousands of new homes alongside green spaces, schools, and a new Overground station. The Gascoigne Estate in Barking and the Becontree Heath area are also seeing significant investment.

Heritage sites: The borough has notable historic buildings including the Elizabethan Eastbury Manor House, the moated Valence House, the ruins of Barking Abbey, and the Grade II listed Civic Centre in Dagenham, designed by E. Berry Webber in the 1930s.

The borough also benefits from strong affordability relative to other London boroughs, combined with improving transport links and large-scale housing investment. Elizabeth line access at Chadwell Heath, District and Hammersmith & City line stations, and the new Barking Riverside Overground station are all strengthening the area’s connectivity and long-term growth potential.