Hackney Central

Template:Infobox London place Hackney Central is the central district of the London Borough of Hackney in East London. It comprises the area roughly surrounding, and extending north from Mare Street. It is situated 4 miles (6.4 km) north east of Charing Cross.

Definition of Hackney

This district is the historical core of Hackney, and in fact, before the 1899 London County Council reorganisation, it was what many would have understood to be Hackney, although the term 'Hackney Proper' was often used to distinguish it from other local settlements such as South Hackney, West Hackney and Hackney Wick.

However, in terms of parish boundaries, up until 1835 the areas of Hackney Proper, Homerton, Clapton, Dalston, De Beauvoir Town, Stamford Hill, and Kingsland all constituted the Parish of Hackney.

Since then, the term has been vastly extended to mean, firstly the 1899 Metropolitan Borough, then, after 1965, the current London Borough.

Cultural quarter

The recently refurbished Hackney Empire is one of the oldest surviving music halls in Britain. (September 2005)

South of Hackney Central railway station Mare Street slices through Hackney's 'cultural quarter' of Town Hall Square. Its North side is dominated by Frank Matcham's magnificent 1901 newly restored Hackney Empire music hall, on whose stage appeared Charles Chaplin and Marie Lloyd - who lived in nearby Graham Road.

On the west side is the 1934-7 Hackney Town Hall in Portland Stone, fronted by an open space created when its predecessor, the Hackney Vestry Hall of 1860 was demolished. Opposite on the East side, is the 2001 refurbishment of the Central Library and Methodist Hall, combined to form the Ocean Music Venue. (Regretably, at the time of writing, this is in receivership. However, plans are well advanced to reopen it)

The square is completed by the 2002 Learning and Technology Centre. This houses the new Hackney Central Library, the Hackney Archive, the local museum and the offices of the Hackney Learning Trust.

The Clowns' archive used to be housed behind the Town Hall. It has now moved, elsewhere in Hackney, to : The All Saints Centre, Haggerston (see link below).

Historical Hackney

St Augustine's Tower. Dating back to the 13th century, this is Hackney Central's oldest building. It is all that remains of the original medieval parish church, which was demolished in the late 18th century (September 2005)

In 1727, Daniel Defoe said of the villages of Hackney

"All these, except the Wyck-house, are within a few years so encreas'd in buildings, and so fully inhabited, that there is no comparison to be made between their present and past state: Every separate hamlet is encreas'd, and some of them more than treble as big as formerly; Indeed as this whole town is included in the bills of mortality, tho' no where joining to London, it is in some respects to be call'd a part of it. This town is so remarkable for the retreat of wealthy citizens, that there is at this time near a hundred coaches kept in it; tho' I will not join with a certain satyrical author, who said of Hackney, that there were more coaches than Christians in it.

Central Hackney was largely unchanged by Roman times, with Ermine Street passing to the west. The land was covered with open oak and hazel woodlands, with marshland around the rivers and streams that crossed the area. Hackney lay in the Catevallauni tribal territory.

The name Hackney derives from a 5th or 6th century Saxon settlement known as Haca's ey - or raised ground in marshland. This was due to the proximity of Hackney Brook, and was probably located on the higher ground around the later St Augustine's Tower. Hackney is not specifically mentioned in the Norman Doomsday Book, as at that time it formed a part of the manor of Stepney.

The medieval village was centred on the 13th century Templar church of St Augustine, which gave Church Street its name - the modern Narrow Way - where it crossed Hackney Brook and met with the north end of Mare Street (originally near the site of the modern town hall). In common with much of Hackney, it developed along a single street - meeting Homerton and Clopton in the north; and along the line of Mare Street in the south. Where it crossed Cambridge Heath towards Bethnal Green.

Little remains of early Hackney, except the Tudor St Augustine's Tower, which survives as Hackney's oldest building; and the positively medieval road network. The churchyard, Hackney Brook, and the surrounding villages prevented Hackney's expansion, and by 1605 the village had a lower rateable value than the other divisions of the parish. In Tudor times, there were a number of fine houses along Church Street, but many Tudor courtiers lived in nearby Homerton. On the site of Brooke House college, in Clopton was sited one of Henry VIII's palaces, infamously where his daughter Mary took the Oath of Supremacy. Her guardian was a Bryck Place Homerton resident, Ralph Sadleir who was also Henry's Principal Secretary of State.

A further cluster of houses existed in medieval times, where Well Street enters Mare Street. It was on open ground, to the north-east of here that the Loddiges family founded their extensive nursery business in the 18th century.

By 1724, while still consisting of a single street, there is an unbroken line of buildings, except by the churchyard and by the brook, with large gardens behind for the finer houses and inns. The 16th century church, despite galleries being installed, became too small for the needs of the parish, and parliament was petitioned in 1790 for a modern larger church to be built. This began in 1791 on a field to the north east of the old church, but was bedeviled by builders' bankruptcies and not finally completed until 1812-13 when the tower and porches were added. Further disaster struck in a fire of 1955.

In the churchyard stands the tomb of Francis Beaufort, devisor of the Beaufort scale; and that of John Hunter, the second governor of New South Wales. The Loddiges family also has a tomb in the churchyard, and memorials within the church. The parish burial register records the death of Anthony, a poore old negro, aged 105 in 1630. This is all that is known of Anthony, but he is the first recorded Black resident of Hackney.

Georgian Hackney

The plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London the following year did a great deal to make country life more appealing to affluent urbanites and this trend continued in the Georgian period. A famous writer, Daniel Defoe, who lived in Stoke Newington, described Hackney in the 1720s as comprising of "twelve hamlets" and "having so many rich citizens that it contained nearly a hundred coaches". Important Hackney residents included the Governor of the Bank of England, who lived in Hackney House, Clapton in 1745 and the chief founder of the East India Company.

The Clapton Square Conservation Area was designated in 1969 and extended in 1991 & 2000. It is dominated by the Church of St John-at-Hackney, built in 1792-97, and St John’s Gardens, together with terraces of listed buildings on Clapton Square which is protected by Act of Parliament as a London Square. Sutton Place also contains well preserved listed buildings dating from the late eighteenth century on the south side, with pairs of early mid-nineteenth century houses to the north.

File:20claptonsquare1.jpg

House in Clapton Sq

Clapton Square's late Georgian houses were laid out in 1816 around central gardens containing a finely restored drinking fountain donated to Hackney residents by Howard Morley in 1894. The east side of the square was destroyed by bombing in World War II, but was rebuilt from 2002 in a neo-Georgian style by Furlong Homes. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Illyich Lenin used to visit, around 1905, his friend and comrade Theodore Rothstein at a house on the west side. 19th century Jewish writer Grace Aguilar also lived in the Square. To the north-east of the square is Holly Villas in Clapton Passage which is a fine terrace of bay-windowed Victorian villas of 1882.

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House in Clapton Sq

‘On the whole I spent my life more happily at Hackney than I had ever done before’ wrote Joseph Priestley, one of England’s greatest scientists who lived at a house in the 1790s (demolished in 1880) on the corner of the Passage and Lower Clapton Road. Priestley discovered oxygen and was the first to pump carbon dioxide into water creating artificial sparkling mineral water, a process that eventually resulted in the multi-billion dollar business Coca Cola! He was hounded out of his house and laboratory in Birmingham by a mob that opposed his support for the French Revolution. He was invited to come to Hackney to take up the post of Unitarian Minister at the Old Gravel Pit Chapel where he had many friends amongst the Hackney Dissenters. A plaque marks the site of his house above the existing corner building in Lower Clapton Road. He emigrated to America in 1794 fearing a repeat of his family’s persecution.

In a cottage behind Priestley’s house, in the closing years of the 18th century, lived a Huguenot widow called Louisa Perina Courtauld, a designer of gold plate. Her son, Samuel, founded the Courtauld dynasty of silk and artificial fibre manufacturers and a descendant founded the Courtauld Institute now in Somerset House.

Modern times

The change from rural suburb to firmly urban, was marked by the arrival of the railway in 1850, with a great iron rail bridge crossing Mare Street. Trams began to make their appearance on the streets in the 1870s, and a tram depot opened in 1882 on Bohemia Place. Increased access and the culverting of Hackney Brook in 1859-60, brought about the present road layout. Many older buildings were pulled down to intensify development and to make room for street widening and the railway. In 1802, The Old Town Hall was built on the site of the vestry house, by the tower. This was re-fronted in a baroque style in 1900. In turn, this building was replaced as being too small for the needs of the borough, the political centre moving to the front of today's Town Hall (1937). Only St Johns Gardens, and Clapton Square, the areas around the 1791 church, remained as public open space.

The Narrow Way (Church Street) remains a vibrant shopping area, and there is a large Tesco supermarket in nearby Morning Lane. This international store group was founded in Hackney, from a market stall in Well Street market in 1919. A Burberry factory is also located off Morning Lane, with a 'factory outlet' that is considered to be Hackney's most visited tourist attraction.

References

• History of Hackney Village (at British History Online)
• Tudor Hackney (from the National Archives)

Transport

Nearest places

• Homerton
• Dalston
• Haggerston
• Bethnal Green
• Lower Clapton
• Hackney Downs

Nearest stations

• Hackney Central railway station
• Hackney Downs railway station

See also

• Metropolitan Borough of Hackney (1900-1965)
• Hackney carriage
• Hackney Central Parliamentary constituency (1885–1950, 1955–1983)

External links

• Clissold Leisure Centre Information about the Clissold Leisure Centre.
• Silverlink Trains Serves Hackney Central railway station.
• Hackney Empire
• Sutton House (National Trust)
• St John at Hackney
• The Round Chapel
• Hackney Walks
• The Clowns' Gallery, Museum and Archive