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It is located on the River Roding near its junction with the River Thames, in the eastern part of outer London.
Features of interest:
The mouth of the Roding (Barking Creek) has great sewage works, receiving the Northern Outfall sewer from London. As of 1911 there were also chemical works and some shipping trade, particularly in timber and fish.
Barking was a fishing village at least from Tudor times (ref. Edgar J. March, Sailing Trawlers, 1950). Fisher Street was named after the fishing community there. From about 1775 welled and dry smacks were used, mostly as cod boats. Fishermen sailed as far as Iceland in the summer. They served Billingsgate fishmarket in London, and moored up at home in Barking Pool.
Sam Hewitt, born around 1802, ran the Short Blue Fleet (England's biggest fishing fleet) based in Barking, and using smacks out of Barking and east coast ports. This fleet used gaff ketches which stayed out at sea for months, using ice for preservation of fish. This ice was produced by flooding Essex fields in winter. At first the fast fifty-foot gaff cutters with great booms projecting beyond the sterns were employed to race the fish to port to get the best prices. In the 1870s steamers replaced the cutters. However the early steam boilers were unreliable, and a bad explosion in 1900 ended the history of this fleet.
Fleeting involved fish being ferried from fishing smacks to steamer-carriers by little wooden ferry-boats. The rowers had to stand as the boats were piled high with fish-boxes. Rowers refused to wear their bulky cork lifejackets because it slowed down their rowing. However they wore heavy seaboots, and many rowboats overturned and rowers were drowned. (ref. Fishing News supplement on Short Blue Fleet, ca. 1964).
The Short Blue Fleet supported other industries in Barking, such as victuallers and block and spar makers. However many such small companies collapsed or moved out around 1854 when the Thames became so polluted that many smack-owners moved to the east coast.
Barking was a suffragan bishopric in the diocese of St Albans.
Former location of biggest power producing unit in Europe at Barking Reach along the river Thames.
William the Conquerer took up residence in the Abbey until the completion of his castle in the Tower of London.
Elizabeth Fry, 1780-1845, the famous prison reformer was buried in the Friends (Quakers) Cemetery in Barking