Simona Staputiene and her husband, Darius, came to Britain from Lithuania after the EU expanded in 2004. He got a job as a truck driver, and she opened a school for Lithuanian children in the living room of their Dagenham home.

“In the first year we had only 12 students,” she says. “In the second year it grew to 30. Then it doubled again.”

Ten years later, more than 2,000 children have attended classes at the Leaping Toads school, now run out of a building once occupied by the Dagenham chapter of the Royal British Legion, the country’s leading charity for veterans. In a large, low room where old soldiers once cradled pints of beer, young Lithuanians learn the language and culture of the country their parents left.

East London has one of the largest concentrations of Lithuanians outside Lithuania. Four thousand live in Barking and Dagenham alone, according to the last census. Lithuanians own clinics, dentists and beauty salons in Dagenham. They work in its banks, supermarkets and library. Lithuanian is heard on its streets and in its schools.

“It is Lithuania in Dagenham,” Staputiene says.

Older residents talk about the good old days, and complain about how far Dagenham has fallen. Staputiene talks about affordable houses, wide roads, green spaces, an easy commute to central London – the very qualities that once drew those older residents to Dagenham.

The first wave of Lithuanians arriving in Britain were dogged by lurid stories. Some were tall tales: Lithuanians hunting, roasting and eating British swans. Others were true crime: In 2016, a Lithuanian robber with an air pistol terrorized Eastern European stores in Dagenham until passersby caught him outside a shop on Martin's Corner; he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Such stories made some Lithuanians reluctant to be openly proud of their nationality, Staputiene says. One of her aims at Leaping Toads is “to lift children’s self-confidence, to show them that Lithuanians are talented and hard-working people.”

Just like her school, a delivery service connects Lithuanians to their homeland. Hundreds of vans shuttle constantly between Britain and Lithuania, bringing everything from toys to a box of apples from a grandparent’s farm. To avoid London's traffic, the vans deliver at night, often at 3 or 4 a.m.

“They usually call 10 minutes beforehand,” Staputiene says. “You look at your phone and think, Who is calling me at this time?” In the run-up to Christmas, few Lithuanians in Dagenham get an uninterrupted night's sleep.

Nobody's losing sleep over Brexit, she says. The Lithuanians she knows aren’t planning to leave; they're here to stay. “Lithuanians will never be 100 percent British. And they don't need to be. We can still all live together.”







Wish You Weren’t Here By Andrew MacAskill and Andrew RC Marshall Photography by Hannah McKay Photo editing: Simon Newman Art Direction: Troy Dunkley Data Reporting: Ryan McNeill Edited by Kari Howard