London Borough of Hackney

In the 13th century the name appears as Hackenaye or Hacquenye, but no certain derivation is advanced.[3] The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Place Names (fourth edition) discusses the origin of the name. The first surviving records of the place name are as Hakney (1231) and Hakeneye (1242 and 1294). The "ey" suffix almost certainly refers to an island; the dictionary favours the interpretation that Hackney means "Haka's island", with Haka being a notable local person and the island (or inaccessible place surrounded by marshes) lying close to the River Lea. This was once a much wilder place than today.

The dictionary suggests that the Hack element may also derive from:

• The Old English "Haecc", meaning a hatch – an entrance to a woodland or common.
• Or alternatively from "Haca", meaning a hook, and in this context, a bend of the river.

Given the island context, the "hatch" option is unlikely to be correct, so the favoured "Haka's Island" or the "Island on the bend" seem more likely.

The place name will have originally referred to just the island or possibly both the island and the manor of the same name based around it. Subsequently, the name Hackney was applied to the whole ancient parish of Hackney.

In the Iron Age and probably until after the Roman period (as the Romans used tribal territories as administrative sub-divisions), the River Lea was considered to separate the territories of the Catuvellauni[4] to the west of the river from the Trinovantes to the east.

The Romans built the Roman road, Ermine Street, which runs through the modern borough under the names Shoreditch High Street and Kingsland Road, among others.

In the Anglo-Saxon period, the River Lea separated the core territories of the East Saxons (on the east side) from the Middle Saxons (on the western, Hackney side) they often controlled. This continuity of this natural boundary from pre-Roman period may be a result of the differing Saxon groups taking control of pre-defined territories.

After both areas were brought under the control of Alfred the Great, the river became the boundary between the historic counties of Middlesex (Hackney) and Essex (modern Newham, Waltham Forest and Redbridge).

Sutton House was built in 1535.

In the Tudor period, the lands of religious orders were seized by the Crown and put up for sale. Thus Hackney became a retreat for the nobility around Hackney Central and Homerton. Henry VIII's Palace was by Lea Bridge roundabout, where BSix Sixth Form College stands today.[5] Sutton House, on Homerton High Street, is the oldest surviving dwelling in Hackney,[6] originally built in 1535 as Bryck Place for Sir Ralph Sadleir, a diplomat. The village of Hackney flourished from the Tudor to late Georgian periods as a rural retreat.

The first documented "hackney coach"—the forerunner of the more generic "hackney carriage"—operated in London in 1621. Current opinion is that the name "hackney", to refer to a London taxi, is derived from the village name.[7] (Hackney, associated with high-stepping horses and horse-drawn carriages, is the root of the French word haquenée, a term used for a small breed of horse,[8] and the Sardinian achetta horse.) Construction of the railway in the 1850s ended Hackney's rural reputation by connecting it to other parts of the city and stimulating development.

Curtain Theatre circa 1600 print. Note: some authorities believe this to be a depiction of the Theatre – the other Elizabethan theatre in Shoreditch.

London's first Tudor theatres were built at Shoreditch. The Gunpowder Plot was first exposed nearby in Hoxton.[9]

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.[10]

The parish church of St John-at-Hackney was built in 1789, replacing the nearby former 16th-century parish church dedicated to St Augustine (pulled down in 1798).

Notable residents from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries included Robert Aske, William Cecil, Samuel Courtauld, Samuel Hoare, Joseph Priestley and Thomas Sutton.

Many grand houses stood in Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill; the latter neighbourhood became a center of Hackney's many Orthodox Jewish residents from the 1930s. Alfred Hitchcock made many of his first films in Hoxton at the Gainsborough Studios in Poole Street.[11]

The interwar era saw the building of social housing by the LCC and the borough council in the area including the Kingsmead Estate, Morningside Estate, Banister House and Nisbet House.[12][13][14] The borough also includes housing projects developed by high-profile postwar architects including The Beckers (1958) by Sir Frederick Gibberd, Granard House (1959) by Colin St John Wilson and Pitcairn House (1962) by Eric Lyons.[15][16][17] Following extensive post-war development and immigration since the late 20th century, population pressure has increased and the area's many Georgian and Victorian terraces are being gentrified, warehouses are being converted to housing, and new flats are being built.[18]

In the 1980s and beyond, Hackney was described as the poorest borough in Britain - although it has been questioned whether this may have in fact been Glasgow, at the time.[19][20][21][22] The council used the phrase 'Britain's Poorest Borough' in official materials.[23][24] It was described in this way as late as 2001[25] and in Parliament in 2010.[26] This picture has now changed: the 2019 Indices of Multiple Deprivation found that Hackney was the 22nd most deprived borough in England, down from 11th in 2015 and 2nd in 2010, whilst Hackney has also featured prominently in discussions of gentrification.[27][28] [29]

It was ranked as inner London's "greenest borough" and London Transport's "best bike borough 2006",[30] with 62 parks and open spaces, covering 815 acres (3.3 km²).[31] Seven Hackney parks have now achieved Green Flag status.[32] One, Abney Park, became scheduled in 2009 as one of Britain's historic parks and garden at risk from neglect and decay.[33] Hackney Marshes play host to the largest collection of football pitches in Europe. Part of it was used as a site for events of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

There are 1,300 listed buildings in Hackney, including the Hackney Empire, Tudor Sutton House, and the Grade I medieval St Augustine's Tower, the borough's oldest building. The borough contains 25 conservation areas including Clapton Square and urban open-spaces including Clapton Common and Clissold Park. Conservation areas also protect large areas of Georgian and Victorian housing, and areas of industrial heritage.[34]

Hackney Town Hall was built in the 1930s for the former Metropolitan Borough of Hackney.

The borough is currently divided into 21 wards, which between them return 57 councillors. Fifteen of the wards return three councillors and the remaining six return two each, in a first past the post system of elections. Ward boundaries are regularly revised, with the last review being in 2014. Until the 2002 revision, the historic boundaries of Hackney and Stoke Newington were retained as a basis for the sub-division of the borough into wards, though the boundary between Hackney and Shoreditch was not re-used to the same degree.[35]

Unlike most other English local authorities, the borough is now governed by a directly elected mayor who is also the political leader of the council. The mayor – currently Philip Glanville[36] – is supported by a cabinet, councillors and a speaker who fulfils the civic and ceremonial duties previously undertaken by the (non-political) mayor.[37]

The borough comprises two parliamentary constituencies: Hackney North and Stoke Newington (represented by Diane Abbott MP) and Hackney South and Shoreditch (represented by Meg Hillier MP); both are Privy Counsellors and Labour Party Members of Parliament.

For elections to the Greater London Council, the borough formed the Hackney electoral division, electing three members. In 1973 it was divided into the single-member Hackney Central, Hackney North and Stoke Newington and Hackney South and Shoreditch electoral divisions.[38] The Greater London Council was abolished in 1986.

Since 2000, for elections to the London Assembly, the borough forms part of the North East constituency. The constituency returned Sem Moema AM as the directly elected Assembly Member in 2021.

St Augustine's Tower. A former property of the Knights of St John dating from the 13th century, St Augustine's Tower is Hackney's oldest building. The tower is all that remains of the medieval parish church, which was demolished in 1798.

Coat of Arms of the London Borough of Hackney

The constituent parts of the borough are Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington. Originally Ancient Parishes, these areas have had consistent boundaries since the mediaeval period.

Parishes in Middlesex were grouped into "Divisions", with Stoke Newington part of the Finsbury division and Hackney and Shoreditch part of the Tower division. The Tower Division was noteworthy in that the men of the area owed military service to the Tower of London.

The Ancient Parishes provided a framework for both civil (administrative) and ecclesiastical (church) functions, but during the nineteenth century there was a divergence into distinct civil and ecclesiastical parish systems. In London the Ecclesiastical Parishes sub-divided to better serve the needs of a growing population, while the Civil Parishes continued to be based on the same Ancient Parish areas.

The Metropolis Management Act 1855 merged the Civil Parishes of Hackney and Stoke Newington under a new Hackney District. This proved very unpopular, especially in more affluent Stoke Newington and after four unsuccessful attempts the two parishes regained their independence when they were separated by mutual consent under the Metropolis Management (Plumstead and Hackney) Act of 1893.[39]

The London Government Act 1899 converted the three Civil Parishes into Metropolitan Boroughs based on the same boundaries. There were minor rationalisations, notably that Shoreditch absorbed part of the tiny Liberty of Norton Folgate (with the rest going to neighbouring Stepney), while Stoke Newington absorbed the South Hornsey exclaves of Hornsey.

Stoke Newington was smaller than the desired size for the new boroughs, and there were proposals to re-merge Stoke Newington and Hackney, or to detach the northern part of Hackney and join it with Stoke Newington. These proposals were rejected due to the experience of "intolerable and interminable feuds" between the districts when they were previously "forced together", and because the First Lord of the Treasury, Arthur Balfour recognised that there was "great ill-feeling and mutual ill-will... between the inhabitants of the two districts";[40] it was therefore decided to merge the bulk of South Hornsey, with a population about 20,000, with Stoke Newington. While this still created a borough of only about 50,000 inhabitants, and thus "the smallest borough in London, the anomaly would be a gradually diminishing one, because the population in this district was rapidly increasing. When dividing London up into boroughs they could not avoid creating some anomalies as to size."[41]

In 1965, the three old boroughs were merged into the new London Borough of Hackney, which adopted a coat of arms that included elements representing its predecessors:

• The shield is surmounted by a representation of Hackney's St. Augustine's Tower.
• An eight-pointed Maltese Cross, for Hackney, which derives from the symbols of the Orders of the Knights Templar and Knights of St. John, both of whom held the Manor of Hackney.
• Bells representing Shoreditch, these are the bells in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons.
• Oaks for Stoke Newington, representing its origins in the Forest of Middlesex.

The council displays, in Hackney Town Hall, a portrait of the Queen wearing the robes of the Most Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem, of which she is Patron.

The borough was formed by the merger of the metropolitan boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington, with the boundaries of these very closely based on the Ancient Parishes of the same name; these areas have been consistently defined for many centuries. Historically, the River Lea formed the boundary between the predecessor counties of Middlesex and Essex.

Localities in the London Borough of Hackney

Within these parish areas are a large number of sub-districts, some of which have sub-districts of their own. These sub-districts are generally based on former hamlets that expanded and merged as the area urbanised. These sub-districts have never been administrative units so have never had any formal boundaries, however a degree of informal definition has developed.

The sub-districts typically take Metropolitan Borough\Ancient Parish boundaries where available, and can also have informal customary boundaries such as road and railways. Despite this, many areas have only a weakly or partially understood extent and it is not unusual for perceptions of place to overlap or change over time.

The area of the former parish and borough of Stoke Newington includes the Woodberry Down area, while the former parish and borough of Shoreditch includes Hoxton and Haggerston.

The former parish and borough of Hackney is much larger and includes Hackney Central, Hackney Downs, West Hackney, Dalston, De Beauvoir Town, Shacklewell, Stamford Hill, London Fields, Upper and Lower Clapton, Hackney Wick and Homerton.

The London Borough of Hackney covers an area of 19.06 km² (7.36 sq mi), rising westward from the Lea to reach 30 m (98 ft) above sea level at Clapton Common and Stamford Hill. The area around Victoria Park, in the south of the borough lies about 15 metres (49 ft) above sea level.

After the Norman Conquest the area became part of the Forest of Middlesex, which covered much of the county, but this gives rise to misunderstanding, as in this context "Forest" is a legal term referring to royal hunting rights and had a weak correlation with woodland cover, especially in the early post-Conquest Period.[42]

By the time of the earliest reliable maps, in the 18th century, the area covered by the modern borough was an agricultural area characterised by enclosed farmland with small hamlets and very little woodland. There were a number of commons, most of which survived to become the basis of modern parks. Many of the major roads were present by this time, the road now known as the A10 was Roman, and others, like many in England, may be older.[42]

With the obvious exception of the urbanisation of the area, the greatest changes have been to the waterways and wetlands of the area. The River Lea, the area's primary geographic feature, has lost its grazing marshes and seen the River Lee Navigation created in 1770. This is an artificial channel of the river, passing through Hackney Cut and across the Hackney Marshes to straighten a meander of the natural river. In Roman times and for a long time after, the River Lea was an estuary, tidal as far as Hackney Wick.

At Hackney Wick the Hackney Brook met the Lea; the confluence was very wide when flooded. Hackney Brook was fully culverted in 1860 by the Metropolitan Board of Works.[43]

The New River was opened in 1613, diverting water from the Lea catchment to create a source of drinking water for London. The New River still passes through the borough, close to Finsbury Park and flows towards Islington. Another man-made feature, the Regents Canal also crosses the borough to the south of De Beauvoir Town in the west, joining the Hertford Union Canal below Victoria Park.[43]

Much of Hackney retains an inner-city character, but in such places as Dalston large housing estates have been joined by newly developed gated communities. In South Hackney, near Victoria Park, terraced Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian housing still survives.

Light industries in the area around the River Lea employ over 3,000 people.

The Lea and Hackney Marshes are underlain by alluvium soils; and the higher ground between Homerton and Stamford Hill is formed on a widening bed of London Clay. Brickearth deposits are within tongues of clay extending beneath Clapton Common, Stamford Hill and Stoke Newington High Street. The centre and south-western districts lie on river terrace deposits of Taplow Gravel. Victoria Park and Well Street Common lie on flood plain gravel.[43]

This data was taken between 1971 and 2000 at the nearest national weather station in Greenwich; around 7 miles (11.3 km) south of Hackney Town Hall:

The following shows the religious identity of residents residing in Hackney according to the census results.

In a 2007 report, every ward of Hackney was among the 10% most deprived in the country, with 47% of children living in low-income households.[62]

Hackney had a reputation as one of the most crime-ridden London boroughs, and some of its streets have even been referred to as "Murder Mile",[63] but cooperation between local police and council has resulted in the borough experiencing a bigger drop in crime than in any other London borough in the four-year period up to 2007 (28% reduction).[64]

In the 2011 census, Hackney had the highest rate of commuters travelling by bicycle in London.[65]

The London Borough of Hackney has eight public libraries:[67]

• Clapton Library
• Dalston CLR James Library
• Hackney Central Library
• Homerton Library
• Shoreditch Library
• Stamford Hill Library
• Stoke Newington Library
• Woodberry Down Library

North London Line Travelling west to east — Dalston Kingsland, Hackney Central, Homerton and Hackney Wick

East London Line Travelling north to south — Dalston Junction, Haggerston, Hoxton and Shoreditch High Street

Lea Valley Lines Travelling south to north – London Fields, Hackney Downs, Rectory Road, Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill.

In March 2011, the main forms of transport that residents used to travel to work were: bus, minibus or coach, 16.9% of all residents aged 16–74; underground, metro, light rail, tram, 9.2%; bicycle, 9.2%; on foot, 7.5%; driving a car or van, 7.1%; train, 4.6%; work mainly at or from home, 3.5%.[68]

65% of households in Hackney are car free.[69]

• John Hillman: 1928
• Theodore Chapman: 1931
• Henry Charles Rawll 1931
• Sir William Ray Knight: 1931
• Captain Sir Oscar Warburg: 1931
• Walter Ernest Loweth: 1934
• Henry Edwin Goodrich: 1941
• Giles Charles Burton: 1947
• Herbert William Butler: 1947
• Florence Helena Du Vergier: 1947
• Walter Thomas Wayman: 1947
• Albert Cullington: 1955
• The Honourable Arthur George Child-Villiers: 1955
• Monsieur Marcel Legras, Mayor of Suresnes Seine: 1958
• William Nichols: 1960
• Clarissa Gooch: 1960
• Mary Omerod: 1964
• Charles Richard Halerow: 1964
• George Ernest Silver: 1964
• George Leonard Alfred Downing: 1965
• Ernest Henderson: 1965
• Sir Louis Sherman: 1978
• Lady Sherman: 1978
• Gladys M. Shanagher: 1978
• Lilian Karpin: 1978
• Arthur Super: 1978
• Alfred Alexander: 1978
• Max Marcus Feldman: 1986
• John Kotz: 1986
• Robert William Masters: 1986
• Edward George Henry Millen: 1986
• Martin Ottolangui: 1986
• Robert Edward Owen: 1986
• Matilda Anne Owen: 1990
• Dr. Alexander Englehardt: 1995
• Joe Lobenstein: 1997
• Gerry Ross: 1997
• Gordon Bell: 19 April 2001
• Saleem Siddiqui: 30 October 2013
• Lt Col Roderick Morriss: 25 February 2015[72][73]

• 3 Military Intelligence Battalion (Volunteers) Intelligence Corps: 2008

• Volunteer Centre Hackney: 21 July 2021[74]
• Medics at the Homerton University Hospital: 28 July 2021[75]