Today I met with fellow creekers for The Creekmouth Preservation Society club meeting, which is held in the Crooket Billet.
It's a small group of people who meet to keep alive the memory, history of a village called Creekmouth which, in 1953, disappeared with the floods. The folk who attend either lived in the village as children or had family who lived there. The village was very small and, in those days, very isolated as you can see from this picture - the village is on the right of the photo. The photo was taken in 1926 - how bare and isolated the area was. In complete contrast to now - the area is full of industrial outlets.
The river running along the bottom is the River Roding which eventually meets up with the River Thames. From the photo it would appear that there was easy access to the both rivers and I know, by talking to some of the Creekers, this too be true even within the last 50 years but now there is only two paths down to the river and both have gates and are occassionally locked.
The building with all the towers is the power station which is today is a derelict building and the land next to and behind it is where the Sunday Dagenham Market is now held. The building down the bottom left is Lawes Factories and the reason for the existence of Creekmouth Village as most of the workers lived there.
I joined the group to learn the history of the area and it has been very interesting and wonderful to meet new people.