There were certainly mills there, this is from British History on-line
"The accounts of the reeve of Westbury and Dagenham for 1321–2 list in great detail the running expenses of what was evidently a large water-mill, belonging to Barking Abbey. (fn. 56) This may have been identical with one of the two mills mentioned in Domesday, and it was probably situated near the abbey, at the point where the Roding joins Barking Creek, on or near the site certainly occupied by Barking mill, sometimes called the 'great mill' from the 17th century onwards. (fn. 57) Barking mill appears to have descended, after the Dissolution, with the manor of Barking. In the 1850's it was on lease, at £400 a year, to Francis Whitbourne, who had spent £8,000 on it. (fn. 58) Later it was occupied by T. D. Ridley & Sons, who operated it, partly by steam, until about 1890, afterwards retaining an office there, but concentrating production at Chelmsford. (fn. 59) The mill stood on the north side of what is now High Bridge Road, which spans Barking Creek at its junction with the river. In 1832 it was a large gabled building with a smaller weather-boarded structure, probably a warehouse, to the south of it. (fn. 60) The warehouse was replaced c. 1870 by a four-storied building of stock brick, connected to the older mill by a bridge over the road. The old mill, which had lost its front gables in the 19th century, was demolished in 1922, together with the early-18th-century mill-house which stood beside it. (fn. 61) In 1964 only the four-storied warehouse, then a plastics factory, was still standing.
The Wellington mill, thus named because it was built in 1815, was a windmill, situated immediately east of Back River, and south of New (now London) Road. It was a weather-boarded smock mill, with an early-19th-century brick house beside it. It was occupied in the later 19th century by Francis Whitbourne, and subsequently by the Firman family, who by 1906 had converted it to electric power. It was demolished in 1926. (fn. 62)"