Writing in 1981, the dialectologist Peter Wright identified the building of the Becontree estate near Dagenham in Essex as influential in the spread of cockney dialect. This very large estate was built by the Corporation of London to house poor East Enders in a previously rural area of Essex. The residents typically kept their cockney dialect rather than adopt an Essex dialect. Wright also reports that cockney dialect spread along the main railway routes to towns in the surrounding counties as early as 1923, spreading further after World War II when many refugees left London owing to the bombing, and continuing to speak cockney in their new homes.