Hackney Central

In Roman times Ermine Street passed to the west of what is now Hackney Central. 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.[4] The settlement was near Hackney Brook, and was probably on the higher ground around the later St Augustine's Tower. Hackney is not mentioned by name in the Norman Domesday Book; at that time it formed a part of the manor of Stepney.

Little remains of early Hackney, except the Tudor St Augustine's Tower, which survives as Hackney's oldest building. 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.[5] On the site of Brooke House college, in Clopton was sited one of Henry VIII's palaces, where his daughter Mary took the Oath of Supremacy. Her guardian was Henry's Principal Secretary of State Ralph Sadleir, a resident of Bryck Place, Homerton.

A further cluster of houses existed in medieval times, where Well Street enters Mare Street. The Loddiges family founded their extensive plant nursery business on open ground to the north-east of here in the 18th century.[6]

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 1812–1813 when the tower and porches were added. Further disaster struck in a fire of 1955. In the churchyard stands the tomb of Francis Beaufort, deviser of the Beaufort wind force scale; and that of John Hunter, the second governor of New South Wales, Australia. 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, the first recorded black resident of Hackney.

Loddiges' family vault in St John's Church Gardens

The villages of Hackney, Lower Clapton and Homerton remained separated by fields into the 19th century. The fine houses remained, with large gardens behind. Artisans and labourers lived in cottages established in these gardens. There was not the room, or the will, for major rebuilding in the village. By 1800, St Thomas' Square, a Georgian square was laid out on the southern end of Mare Street. By the 20th century, these buildings had declined and were replaced with public housing.[7] An early 18th-century mansion, now the New Landsdown Club, but once the headquarters of Elizabeth Fry's British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners remains at 195 Mare Street. It is Grade II* listed, but in poor condition and on the English Heritage register of buildings at risk.[8] In neighbouring Homerton, (to the east of the churchyard) Sutton Place was built by 1806, near Sutton House.

The rebuilding of the Church, on a field to the north of the village, altered the course of the road and allowed the establishment of Clapton Square in 1816, in nearby Lower Clapton. Much of the area to the north and east of the churchyard now forms the Clapton Square Conservation Area, designated in 1969.

1830 Map of Hackney village

A map showing the Hackney ward of Hackney Metropolitan Borough as it appeared in 1916.

During the Victorian era, many of the old buildings were swept away and the estates broken up to form streets of terraced housing. 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.[note 1]

Increased access and the culverting of Hackney Brook in 1859–1860, 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 parish vestry hall on the Narrow Way was rebuilt.[9] In 1900 it was re-faced in stone and given a pediment inscribed 'Hackney Old Town Hall'.[10] A new town hall was built on a different site in 1866; it was in turn superseded by today's Town Hall, built in 1937. By the turn of the 20th century, only St Johns Gardens, and Clapton Square, the areas around the 1791 church, remained as public open space.

The area is 2 miles (3.2 km) north-east of the City of London with frequent trains from Hackney Downs railway station to Liverpool Street. Hackney Central railway station is a London Overground station with westbound trains to Richmond and Clapham Junction via Dalston Junction, and eastbound trains to Stratford via Homerton.

London bus routes 30, 38, 55, 106, 236, 242, 253, 254, 276, 277, 394, N38, N55, N242, N253, N277 and W15 serve Hackney Central.[21][22] Route N277 also serves here when the 277 route was withdrawn between Dalston and Highbury Corner and the N277 was retained.[23]