Dagenham, Essex Genealogy

England   Essex   Essex Parishes



Parish History
Dagenham St Peter and St Paul is an Ancient Parish in the county of Essex. Other places in the parish include: Bacontree Heath and Chadwell Heath. The church is the original parish church of, what was once, the small village of Dagenham. It dates back to the end of the 12th century but most of it was rebuilt at the start of the 19th century when the original tower collapsed. The present tower is dated 1800.

One of the longest-serving vicars of Dagenham was Rev. Iain Jack, who died at age 82 in 1797, having served Dagenham for 58 years. Rev. Blackborne was the grandson of Sir Richard Levett, Lord Mayor of London and was married to Frances Fanshawe of Parsloes Manor in Dagenham. Rev. Blackborne and his wife are buried at Saint Anne's Church, Kew. The Blackborne family had long lived in Dagenham and Hornchurch. At the time of the Restoration, the entire manor of Cockermouth, to which the church was appended, was owned by Sir Thomas Darcy who sold it to William Blackborne Esq., whose heirs later sold to the Bonynges.

Subsequent churches in Dagenham were created from the Ancient parish boundary.

The modern parishes of Dagenham are part of the Diocese of Chelmsford. The diocese of Chelmsford was created in 1914, prior to this Essex parishes were in the jurisdiction of the Bishops of London until 1845 when they transferred to the diocese of Rochester. The diocese of Chelmsford has 474 parishes and 600 churches and is the second largest region in the church of England outside London.

Dagenham first appeared in a document (as Dæccanhaam) in a charter of Barking Abbey dating from 687 AD. The original area of Dagenham was almost certainly just a small farmstead, the "ham" or farm of a man called Daecca, as Dæccan hamm means home of a man called Dæcca.

In 1931 the Ford Motor Company relocated from Trafford Park in Stretford, to a plant in Dagenham, which was already the location of supplier Briggs Motor Bodies. A 500 acre (2 km²) riverside site was developed to become Europe's largest car plant, a vast vertically integrated site with its own blast furnaces and power station, importing iron ore and exporting finished vehicles. By the 1950s Ford had taken over Briggs at Dagenham and its other sites at Doncaster, Southampton, Croydon and Romford. At its peak the Dagenham plant had 4 million square feet (371600 m²) of floor space and employed 40,000. On February 20, 2002, full production was discontinued due to overcapacity in Europe and the relative difficulty of upgrading the 60 year old site compared with other European sites such as Almussafes, Valencia, Spain and Cologne.

Dagenham was an ancient, and later civil, parish in the Becontree hundred of Essex. The Metropolitan Police District was extended to include Dagenham in 1840. The parish formed part of the Romford Rural District from 1894. The expansion of the Greater London conurbation into the area caused the review of local government structures and it was suggested in 1920 that the Dagenham parish should be abolished and its area divided between Ilford Urban District and Barking Town Urban District.Separately, the London County Council proposed that its area of responsibility should be expanded beyond the County of London to cover the area. Instead, in 1926 the Dagenham parish was removed from the Romford Rural District and became an urban district. In 1938, in further recognition of its development, Dagenham became a municipal borough. In 1965 the Municipal Borough of Dagenham was abolished and its former area became part of the London Borough of Barking, which is now known as Barking and Dagenham.

Dagenham is a large suburb in east London, England, forming the eastern part of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and located 12 miles (19.3 km) east of Charing Cross. It was historically an agrarian village in the county of Essex and remained mostly undeveloped until 1921 when the London County Council began construction of the large Becontree estate. The population of the area significantly increased during the 20th century, with the parish of Dagenham becoming an urban district in 1926 and a municipal borough in 1938. It has formed part of Greater London since 1965 and is a predominantly residential area, with some areas of declining industrial activity, including the Ford Dagenham assembly plant. The population is set to rise as the southern part of Dagenham, adjacent to the River Thames, forms part of the London Riverside section of the Thames Gateway redevelopment area.

Contributor: Please add separate and linked pages for each of the denominational churches in Dagenham.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts, non conformist and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Online images are available Seax - Essex Archives Online From the Essex Record Office

Census records
Contributor: Include an overview if there is any unique information, such as the census for X year was destroyed. Add a link to online sites for indexes and/or images. Also add a link to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection.

Index for the Census may be searched at FamilySearch Historical Records

http://www.1881pubs.com/ for details of public houses in the 1881 census

Poor Law Unions
Romford Poor Law Union, Essex

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Essex Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
Contributor: Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.