A brick Neo-Georgian town hall, a medieval abbey gatehouse and new sawtooth-roofed housing along the Thames.
What Barking looks like
The town square is a pedestrianised market street, with stalls and awning frames set along the paving between the shopfronts and the station. A red brick clock tower with a domed cupola rises over , three storeys of tall sash windows below it. The on East Street is shorter and older, a red brick building from 1893 with stone dressings around its windows and a domed cupola of its own.
Low stone footings are laid out across open grass at the ruins, a path cutting straight through them to the one surviving gatehouse. is squared stone with a crenellated parapet and a Gothic arched window over its passage. St Margaret's Church rises behind it in pale stone with a battlemented tower, headstones close around it on three sides.
A row of 1930s semi-detached houses lines north of the centre, brick and white render with a bay window and a tiled gable on each. Low fences close off the small front gardens. 's lake sits beyond them, with a wooden jetty at one end and a path circling the water under bare trees.
New brick terraces continue south along the Thames at , each house stepped to its own gable in a sawtooth roofline with narrow vertical windows. Community buildings with white render and coloured glazing panels stand among the new streets.
Shot in Barking
For a 2016 segment of the ITV show Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, the presenters arrived outside Barking Town Hall to surprise a brass band musician. Black Mirror used the lake in Barking Park for a scene in its fourth season.
Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, 2016
Outside Barking Town Hall
The presenters arrived outside Barking Town Hall for a 'Suzuki surprise' segment, surprising a brass band musician on the forecourt. The segment was shot live on location, facing the building's clock tower. Street View
Black Mirror, 2018
Barking Park
Barking Park appears in Black Museum, the sixth episode of the show's fourth season. The production names the park itself and not a specific path or vantage within it. Street View
What Barking can double for
Reading, Berkshire, England
Reading Abbey Ruins has the same low stone footings in open grass beside a surviving Norman gatehouse, the same layout of a dissolved monastic precinct as Barking's own. Both sites pair a ruined abbey with an intact medieval gate a few steps away. Reading's Abbey Gateway is squarer and higher than the Barking gatehouse, so a close match needs a wide frame rather than a tight one on the arch. Modern buildings are visible past the ruins in both towns and need to stay out of frame. Try searching abbey ruins gatehouse now.
IJburg in Amsterdam, Netherlands
The sawtooth roofline and brick terraces on Fielders Crescent match the massing of contemporary Dutch waterside housing, the same repeated stepped gable and narrow window rhythm used across IJburg's newer blocks. Both are large scale developments built on reclaimed or redeveloped land beside water. IJburg's brick runs darker and its blocks sit closer to canals rather than a tidal river, so a frame with open water in view needs care. A street level shot along the terraced row holds up better than a wide aerial. Try searching sawtooth gable brick terraces now.
Barking Town Hall was designed with Stockholm's own City Hall as a reference, so its red brick mass and its ground floor arcade of arched windows share the same civic vocabulary. A shot that stays off the skyline could pass for a smaller Swedish town hall without needing the real Kungsholmen waterfront. Stockholm City Hall's own tower is far taller, slimmer and topped with three gilded crowns, so any wide shot that includes the full tower gives the building away immediately. Keep the frame on the brick mass and the arcade below the roofline. Try searching brick civic arcade now.
.jpg)
