Dagenham?

Anybody live/lived there? What's the feedback?

Property prices being as grim as they are leaves Dagenham a fairly attractive proposition in terms of 'value'. Daytime trips out there to view property have left me with the impression it's very bland/suburban and fairly ugly (I can live with all that for the sake of getting a decently sized property)

Gets a really bad press in terms of crime but it felt pretty safe to me, how terrifying is it in reality?

I've been living in Hackney for about 15 years, long before it became even vaguely 'nice', so my tolerance for crap areas is reasonably high.

Cheers!

Shithole

It certainly isn't the ideal which it was originally planned to be.

The vast majority of people who lived there in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's all worked at the Ford plant. Henry Ford actually contributed to the construction budget in order to sweeten the deal for his factory.

Sadly, ever since the plant was considerable reduced in size and production reduced, there have been significant unemployment issues.

Bellway seem to be building apartments down that way
just past ferry lane towards the market
soulless place
the whole area reminds me of parts of East Germany before the wall was dropped
blocks of flats characterless / industrial area

@swampie significantly grimmer than (for example) Plaistow, Edmonton, Enfield in your opinion? (i.e. the other places in Greater London which remain vaguely affordable!)

I grew up in Dagenham, moved there when I was 5, moved away when I was 20, but my family still live there.It is a shithole. Particularly when I was growing up, it was violent and racist. That element seems to be dying away now, though it's still a bland urban shithole.

What I've found with Dagenham is that your immediate neighbours make the biggest difference. My folks currently live next to an Indian family and have a currently good experience. But their previous next door neighbours were between 5 and 25 eastern Europeans who were well known for credit card fraud and stealing - my parents were too scared to go on holiday and I think they were right to be scared. Prior to that their next door neighbours were a young couple who beat their kids and where the husband beat his wife. Prior to that, when I lived there, it was a woman who, a few years after breaking up with her husband and moving out, killed her small child.

Dagenham isn't a bad place per se but it's where the dregs go; people who have no other options. That can lead to camaraderie - it did with my friends. But it can also lead to some truly horrible experiences.

Honestly if I were you I'd be looking at Chingford. Not much more expensive and much nicer and more central.

@BleakReference cheers for that! Yeah, Chingford on the list along with a few other spots.

I've always prior to moving to the coast lived south gradually moving further and further out
the borough bermondsey new cross Brockley south croydon
also had a stint in Newington Green loved it there but finances said otherwise if I had my time again I would go south west battersea Clapham but it all comes down to the pennies
But East London as always been in a shithole and always will be that goes for Essex as well
happy hunting do the right thing and head south
but where ever you are just lock your front door and leave the chavs crack heads and bulgmanians outside

^wow

Nuffin wrong with Dagenham that can't be solved when we get the new submarines wid the nukes.... sent from Gale St

Now that the Dagenham bit's been kinda answered, can I turn this question on its head a bit and ask:

If you had to live within an hour's train connection from Liverpool St, and accessible to M25/M1/A1 road links to North and Stansted Airport (i.e. the NE quarter of greater London), where's the 'nicest' places?

A bit of green space would be nice, and doesn't need to be the cheapest place, but the bits of Essex I've been to randomly seem pretty characterless. Are there any gems out there?

The thread is not filling me with confidence that there are any?

FWIW I've lived in and enjoyed Clapham/Brixton area for over 10 years but need a bigger place and job/family suggest the above location change. But I also was born in Hull and spent 2 years in Grantham recently so have a high desolation threshold ;-)

Thanks @b&d @BleakReference and @NurseHolliday you're from these endz no?

Check out south London our kid.

Hah

@Olly398 ^that was at the OP.

I'd be looking around mid essex villages in an arc from Saffron Walden to Billericay - Maldon. That greenbelt band is bloody lovely. If you do the Dunwich route you'll see the north bits, Southend BHF route you get the mid bit. Get riding, the best way to find your bit of peace.

I think if you want a bit of a town with a little bit of culture, you could do a lot worse than Norwich. But season ticket /trains would eat up your life.

I really like Norwich, have some fam there, but it's too far. We need daily access to London. Thanks for suggestions though!

Shenfield, Brentford, Billericay, and Upminster are all fairly nice but you'd never call them gems - just bland suburban shitholes. But bland suburban shitholes that are more or less safe, and with green spaces around them. I grew up in Dagenham and all the middle class girls we knew came from these places, and they more or less turned out alright.

Everything wot @BleakReference said about Dagenham.

I've got some totally stonking friends who grew up in Dagenham but they'll all be the first to admit the rest of the cunts that live there are pretty much cunts.

Inside the M25 or outside?

It's all shite inside and shite outside too up until about Chelmsford and then you can live in little villages, but if you're commuting, you probably don't want to drive for 20 mins to the station first, so you have to live in a town, which is shite.

the rest of the cunts that live there are pretty much cunts

To a man.

Would be interested if we had mutual pals, I'm pretty sure I know all the decent people from Dagenham - not something that takes too long tbh.

Out of Thaxted cycling towards Great Dunmow on the B184 watching the planes land a not totally unexpected sudden hailstorm made me look for shelter. The converted barn inhabitants, bless them, made me a nice cup of tea and told me that they commuted to London with Stansted express.

There is really nice people I know in Great Dunmow.

Brighton hour from London or 5 hours the way the trains are at the moment
top place but housing expensive but still a better deal to be had than in london
or Portsmouth quite like the place myself
housing really still at bargain prices again pretty lively place plenty of shit going on venture out to far thou watch out plenty of banjo playing hillbillies about

Cuntville

I'd love to live in Brighton, but I don't want to be one of those London cunts with my London salary coming into a non-London setting and fucking it for the locals. It's sort of what I hate about London now, as a native Londoner.