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The statue is located outside the main entrance to the Bata shoe factory in East Tilbury. The factory closed in 2005 and is now part of the Thames Industrial Estate. The buildings and many buildings of the surrounding estate of factory workers' housing are Grade II listed, as important examples of modernist architecture of the 1930s. For a similar venture in Essex, Silver End (home of the Crittall window company), near Braintree is also of architectural importance. Thomas Bata was the founder of this shoe empire, and he has a street named after him in the village.