Big shoes to fill

The Thames Industrial Park was formerly the home of the Bata Shoe Factory. The Bata company was founded in 1894 by Czech industrialist Tomas Bata, adapting American mass-production methods to traditional shoe making, rapidly expanding during the 1930’s to become one of the world’s largest shoe manufacturers and retailers.

Tomas Bata had a vision to provide both work and housing in a garden village setting, having already built similar factories and towns around the world by 1932. The Bata Shoe Factory opened in East Tilbury in 1933, together with purpose built housing and community buildings, transforming the rural settlement into a thriving community.

The factory buildings and layout of East Tilbury is based on Bata buildings in Zlin in the Czech Republic. The Bata master plan laid the foundation for a self-sufficient community of factories and workers’ housing that included a cinema, restaurants, sports facilities, a garage, farms, a grocer, a butcher and a post office.

It provided family houses with gardens for all married workers and a dormitory hotel (now Stanford House) for single workers. The community attracted workers from across Europe as well as the more traditional shoe manufacturing centres in the Midlands. At the height of its success, 6,000 resident workers lived in the East Tilbury development.

The factory buildings are an example of a modernist style known as Constructivism and are formed on a rigid 6.5m grid. Baťa utilised American building methods and encouraged his architects to develop a fast method of construction using either a steel or concrete frame. The layout and buildings were designed by Vladimir Karfik, who also worked with renowned architects Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Rapidly changing manufacturing conditions in the 1990’s and a fiercer trading environment in Britain led Bata to rationalise its operation. It downsized production in East Tilbury and sold off assets including the houses and factory site, finally closing its operation in 2007. 

Today the Bata factory buildings still dominate the settlement and the taller buildings are visible for some distance, rising above the flat surrounding landscape. The status and importance of the Bata Settlement as part of Britain’s industrial buildings history was recognised by its designation as a conservation area in 1993 and the listings of multiple buildings on the estate.