Barking

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Barking is part of Barking and Dagenham Borough. It is dominated by Barking Park and the main centre.

Barking History

The manor of Barking was the site of Barking Abbey, a nunnery founded in 666 by Eorcenwald, bishop of London, destroyed by the Danes and reconstructed about a hundred years later in 970 by King Edgar. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, Barking Abbey was demolished: the parish church, St Margaret's stands upon its site, where some walling and foundations are all that otherwise remain. The Norman church of St Margaret was where Captain James Cook married Elizabeth Batts of Shadwell in 1762. St Margaret in Barking is also the burial place of many members of the Fanshawe family of Parsloes Manor, including the memoirist Ann Fanshawe.

Barking was an urban district from 1894 and became a municipal borough in 1931. The Municipal Borough of Barking was abolished in 1965 along with the Municipal Borough of Dagenham and the area became part of the London Borough of Barking (renamed Barking and Dagenham in 1980).

Its name came from Anglo-Saxon Berecingas, meaning either "the settlement of the followers or descendants of a man called Bereca" or "the settlement by the birch trees".

Barking is sometimes cited as the origin of the phrase "barking mad", meaning "insane" or "intensely mad". This is attributed to the alleged existence of a medieval insane asylum attached to Barking Abbey. It was first used in the Times of London, after an asylum patient escaped and killed 11 people. The headline read: "Barking Mad Murderer". More