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Published: October 4th 2011
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The staff had organised the trip for 2 Willow Road and Fenton House volunteers to visit Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre and explore Bata Estate in East Tilbury on 10 September 2011. I left home at 9 o’clock and it let me arrive at Barking just after 10 o’clock. I ensured I had scanned my oyster card and bought a return ticket to East Tilbury. I was meant to take the 10:34 train. A lot of fellow volunteers seemed to have the same plan as myself. As the time approached, several of 2 Willow Road volunteers arrived, and we got on the same train. After getting off at the station, we walked on the straight road to the Library which runs Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre. A wide variety of memorabilia, e.g. shoes, long boots, account books, medals, trophies, original park bench, models of cinema etc were displayed in the glass cases.
Afterwards, one of the volunteers of Bata Resource Centre offered a talk and told about Tomas Bata and Bata Estate’s development. Tomas Bata was a Czech entrepreneur, founder of Bata Shoe Company, one of the world’s biggest multinational retailers, manufacturers, and distributors of footwear and accessories. After his
tragic death in an aeroplane crash, his son, Mr Jan Bata planned building the factory and its estate on the marshes adjoining the river wall near East Tilbury village.
Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre was established and opened in 2002. There have been a wide range of memorabilia and documents collected. We have been told that collections are regularly updated and changed in the glass cases so that visitors can see different types of goods and documents. We were offered to read copies of Bata Record, which was published weekly in its heyday and found each copies of journals contained comprehensive details of social activities, residents’ important news like marriage or Coming of Age Party, as well as Bata Shoe’s advertisement. After reading the detailed contents of Bata Record, I felt Bata Estate of East Tilbury was like an independent country in its heyday. We were also offered refreshments and biscuits.
I decided to have lunch before the walking trail. One of the staff kindly took me and some of my colleagues to the place where there were benches. We walked through the narrow lane behind the five storey concrete building, which was once used as hotel. We
sat on the benches between the Car Park of the former hotel and the village hall, which was the cinema in the heyday. Opposite to us, there were flat roofed buildings. The five storey building was the tallest building in East Tilbury, and much of the houses were two or three storey houses laid out along the avenue, diagonally from the aerial view. Such layout didn’t shelter us from wind and sun and I needed to gulp my lunch!
We were offered a walking trail and were shown the buildings which were used as leather, rubber and hosiery factory, administration block, fire brigade and houses which were used for factory workers, parks used for social activities, sport events, leisure activities, and areas where the primary school and technical college used to be, all of which were established and wholly or partly subsidised by Bata Shoe Company. We saw the statue of Tomas Bata and were given the permission to explore the site of the former factory block. Most of the concrete buildings understandably looked derelict, but a handful of remains e.g. the signpost of Bata factory, the board of Bata, mast with the siren on top on the site
of the former fire brigade, etc proved that the site was used for a flourishing Shoe Company.
It is interesting to see a group of flat roofed houses and streets with a line of poplar trees in one of the suburban areas of London. The good thing is we don’t seem to have extreme cold weather these days and the residents don’t need to worry about the snow on the flat roof in the southeast of England.
We were offered very informative guide by two people were brought up and live in East Tilbury. It was interesting to hear about various sporting events and social events which they participated in and looked at as one of the spectators and the shops they used between the 1940s and 1960s, while showing us around the estate.
I bought a guide book of Bata Estate and have been studying about Tomas Bata and his successors, history of East Tilbury, and Bata Shoe Company, and Zlin. I found Tomas Bata and his successors extremely ambitious and innovative people and they bravely put their ideas into practise and successfully implemented utopian management style containing the arrangements of sporting activities and generous welfare systems for the employees. One of the fellow volunteers showed me the guide book of Bata style architecture in Zlin on the way back to London. I understand the layout consisting of flat roofed buildings, gridlined streets with poplar trees came from Tomas Bata’s hometown. I have been doing further research and have understood that Le Coubusier was involved in planning the urban design of Zlin and the layout of Bata Estate of East Tilbury has relevant connections with the design of 2 Willow Road.
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