A 2024 analysis by
The Economist found Basildon to be the "most typical place in Britain'.
Shopping The town centre has a variety of high street stores. As well as shops and coffee houses in the open air East Walk and Town Square, there is the covered
Eastgate Shopping Centre which is home to over 100 retailers. When Eastgate was completed in 1985, it was the largest covered shopping centre in Europe until the opening of the
Metro Centre. Eastgate has undergone a number of facelifts since 1985, with its most recent substantial refurbishment in 2007 at a cost of more than £10m. Further shopping facilities in the town can be found at Westgate Shopping Park, while there is a pavement market selling fresh fruit and vegetables as well as household goods, which in 2018 moved to a new location in St. Martins Square. Outside of the town centre there are retail parks at Pipps Hill and Mayflower on the A127, while there are smaller shopping centres in Laindon and Pitsea, which is home to a famous market that opened in the 1920s. There are several smaller shopping areas located in each of the communities.
Festival Leisure Park Festival Leisure Park is a trading
leisure park located in the north of Basildon and owned by
Aviva. In 1989, the culture and history of the town was documented by the newly re-opened Towngate Theatre, when it commissioned a community play from
Arnold Wesker for the town's 40th anniversary. The potted history that Wesker called "Boerthel's Hill" was acted out by a 125 members of the community recording a fascinating history of London's East Enders, who were the first Basildon residents.
Cinema Basildon currently has two cinemas:
Cineworld and
Vue. The former was owned previously by
Empire Cinemas, but was purchased as part of $124m deal to purchase five cinemas; it had opened originally as a
UCI. Previously, Basildon had an
ABC Cinema, which was built in 1971 and was based in North Gunnells. This changed hands several times becoming a
Cannon and a Robins cinema before closing in 1999. The building until August 2022 was home to the
British Heart Foundation store. Prior to this, a cinema in
Pitsea, originally called The Broadway from 1930, before changing its name in 1955 as The Century, operated until its closure in 1966 when it was converted to a Bingo hall. In 2018, planning permission was granted for a new ten screen Empire cinema, along with new restaurants on the site of Freedom House in Basildon town centre, with demolition of the current buildings on site starting in 2019. As of January 2023, the partially completed cinema has not opened. As of July 2024, the cinema was opened under Vue's management.
Libraries and museums Basildon Central Library is now based in the Basildon Centre (since 1989), but had previously been in prefabs next to the temporary council offices on Fodderwick. There are also numerous smaller libraries across Basildon: Clay Hill Road in Vange, Pitsea Centre in Pitsea, Fryerns Library in Whitmore Way, and Laindon Library on New Century Road Laindon. Basildon is home to the
Haven Plotlands Museum and was previously home to the National Motorboat Museum, which had been based at Wat Tyler Park. Currently there is not a museum dedicated to the history of Basildon, though plans had previously been made to site one at Wat Tyler Park. As of 2018 there is still a campaign to have a museum created.
Parks and recreations grounds Image:Pitsea War Memorial Howard Park west.jpg|Pitsea War Memorial in Howards Park (Grade II) Image:Northlands Park, Basildon - geograph.org.uk - 88826.jpg|Northlands Park Image:Ruined Hawthorn in Dunton Plotlands - geograph.org.uk - 1375134.jpg|Langdon Nature Reserve Basildon was designed with large amounts of green spaces with
Gloucester Park dominating the centre of Basildon. Kent View Recreation ground in Vange and
Northlands Park in
Pitsea are the other large green spaces. Other formal parks include Mopsies Park in Timberlog Lane, and Howards Park in Pitsea. Basildon is also home to
Wat Tyler Country Park which opened in 1984; Marks Hill Nature Reserve (opened 1981);
Vange Hill; One Tree Hill Country Park; Langdon Hill Country Parks and the RSPB Nature Reserve at Bowers Marshes.
Essex Wildlife Trust run a large reserve at
Langdon.
Heritage Even though Basildon is a new town, there are still traces of its historical past visible. Old roads that once connected the villages have been incorporated into the new town: Clay Hill Road, Timberlog Lane, Rectory Road, Pound Lane, Church Road and Dry Street. Dry Street is a perfect example of old Basildon, as it is an undeveloped country lane that runs through One Tree Hill and Langdon Hill Country Parks and is home to several listed properties. Other than St Martin's Church, most of the historical parish churches still exist. St Nicholas (13th century and Grade I listed) sits proudly over
Laindon, from where Basildon can be seen clearly, however St Peter's (13th century Grade II* listed) at Nevendon is hidden behind Sainsbury's and is little known by its residents. St Michael's at Pitsea is said to be 13th century, but was rebuilt in 1870 and now only its Bell Tower remains on Pitsea Mount. The village of Basildon's parish church, Holy Cross (Grade II listed) can still be seen in Church Road, while Vange's 14th-century church All Saints was remodelled in the 19th century and is set back from the London Road and is Grade II listed. Other buildings of note are: the Barge Inn at Vange; the Broadway at Pitsea, with its mock Tudor architecture built by Harold Howard in 1929; Cromwell Manor, formerly Pitsea Hall Grade II listed, by Pitsea railway station that dates from the 15th century; and Great Chalvedon Hall, Grade II listed and now a pub in Tyefields, which is reputed to date from the 16th century. Nevendon Hall was built in 1789 and is Grade II listed. The moat at the former site of Boetlers, a Tudor house demolished in the 1960s, is located near to Holy Cross Church. One notable building is Little Coopers Farmhouse, which was originally located in Takeley. It was designated a Grade II building in 1980. In the late 1980s, due to redevelopment, the whole structure was dismantled and re-built at the Wat Tyler Country Park. On the west side of town, the
Dunton Plotlands area was occupied by small rural dwellings in the mid twentieth century. Today, it forms
Langdon Nature Reserve. In 2008, a
National Lottery funded heritage trail was started to highlight the 1960s architecture.
Media Basildon's local radio stations are
BBC Essex,
Heart East,
Greatest Hits Radio East and its own community radio station, which is aimed towards the residents of Basildon, East Thurrock and its surrounding areas called Gateway 97.8 which broadcasts from the Eastgate Shopping Centre. Basildon is within the BBC London and ITV London region. Television signals are received from
Crystal Palace TV transmitter.
BBC East and
ITV Anglia can also be received from the
Sudbury TV transmitter as well as
BBC South East and
ITV Meridian from the
Bluebell Hill TV transmitter. Basildon Development Corporation had installed a Cable Television service into many of its home, called
Rediffusion, but this service stopped during the 1990s. The service was replaced by
United Artists Cable which were based in the town; this is now
Virgin Media, although the customer service operation closed in the 2000s. Since 1969,
The Evening Echo newspaper offices have been based on the Pipps Hill Industrial Estate. The town has been home to The Yellow Advertiser since 1976.
Television Basildon was the setting for the
BBC programme
White Gold with filming taking place in Basildon Town Centre.
Channel 5 programme Extreme Hair Wars was set at JET training academy in Basildon. The fictional character
Nellie Bertram, played by
Catherine Tate in the
US comedy television series The Office was said to have been born in Basildon.
Music Basildon had a great influence on the 1980s music scene, with bands
Depeche Mode and
Yazoo, and later by
Alison Moyet in her solo career and
Vince Clarke in his role with
Erasure.
Film The documentary film
New Town Utopia by Christopher Ian Smith was made about Basildon. Basildon also hosts Europe's only Underwater film studio that can be inside or out, as it has a removable roof. The studios have been used to film scenes in the Anglo-French drama
The Tunnel and for the film
47 Meters Down.
Art Basildon was the focus of
Magic Party Place by photographer
CJ Clarke. " a largely white working class community, the town is one of the most statistically average places in England", he said.
Poetry and literature Caron Freeborn, (previously Severn), (1966–2019) author, poet and performer, grew up in Basildon and attended Fryerns Comprehensive. Later she attended Lucy Cavendish college at Cambridge as a mature student, then as a teacher/lecturer in creative writing including poetry. Freeborn obtained her master's degree in Renaissance literature. She published three novels:
Three Blind Mice (2001), described by Marian Keyes as "a dark and compelling love story of a genre that could be called East End noir";
Prohibitions (2004), a literary thriller again set in the East End; and ''Presenting … the Fabulous O'Learys
(2017), a take on King Lear
, updated to the 1980s. Georges Perec is my hero'' (2015) showcased Freeborn's poetic voice(s). Much of
Georges Perec is my hero celebrates the real, the brutal (including embracing the brutalist architecture of Basildon), with many poems and photographs based on the town. ==Modern architecture and design==