Fords Stamping Plant – Dagenham – August 2015

The History

Ford Dagenham is a major automotive factory located in Dagenham, London, United Kingdom operated by the Ford of Britain subsidiary of Ford Motor Company. The plant opened in 1931 and has produced 10,980,368 cars and over 37,000,000 engines in its history. It covers around 475 acres and has received over £800 million of capital investment since the year 2000.

Vehicle assembly ceased at the plant in 2002 but it continues as a major production site with capacity to assemble 1.4 million engines a year. In 2008 the plant produced around 1,050,000 engines and was the largest producer of Ford diesel engines globally. It was announced in October 2012 that the stamping plant at Dagenham would close in Summer 2013 with the loss of 1,000 jobs

The Explore

Sat indoors bored one night, I decided to have a crack at this place. I grabbed a couple of mates and off we went. Now we knew it had already been stripped, but decided to have a butchers anyways. After all, its only down rhe rod and is an essex icon.

We parked the car on thr trading estate over the road and headed off the the site. Its huge, I remember going past it with my parents and my grandad loads of times as a kid so some of the views were familiar.
We clambered over the gate and made out way inside, having a very near miss with a security guy.

We spent a few hours in there having a wander round and eventually made our way into the offices that still had an amazing amount of stuff in them. The offices lead to the rof where we sayt and chilled out and snapped a few pictures.

Again we spotted secca and this time there were three of them and it looked like they knew we were there so we mad out way out and disappeared

Enjoy the pics

RIP UK Industry. Great report, thanks.

Nice photographs. I like the sign "A place for everything, and everything in its place"

What a place, as you said it truly is an icon.
Fantastic shots, not seen many like this before so I'm guessing secca are on the ball - well done for getting these!
Thanks for sharing

You've got some belting shots,it was well worth exploring so much to see and clean too!!

back in happier times, probs early ninties, worked at Fords, was on the production line that made the courier vans as a maintenance electrician. looked after two robots, lhs and rhs body panels. 1st picture was up stairs and it was the door to body machine. laser guided automated. ensured that the door was onto the car with minimal gaps. quite good to watch. the other two are the actual courier robot cant remember if its the right or left side one. and the last photo was the panel welding after the robot. god that is years ago now. And they have raised the plant and its being built on. think they are doing apartments.

the Ford UK HQ at Warley in Brentwood has now gone too, after 50 years. The building is being converted into flats.