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Abney Park Cemetery. Entrance Egyptian, with railings in complementary style added in 1993. The offices flanking the entrances gates were stonemasons' workshops, and the Egyptian says ‘the gates of the abode of the mortal parts of man’Named from Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor of London in 1700-1, a City Alderman and director of the Bank of England, who held the manor of Stoke Newington in the early 18th century and whose town house stood here
Abney House, built by Thomas Gunston in 1678, named after its early c18 owner Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor, and demolished 1843. Abney Park Cemetery occupies the grounds. In 1839, the Wesleyans rented Abney House as the 'preparatory Branch' of their Theological Institute, until Richmond College was opened in 1843. Only the great iron gates on Stoke Newington High Street now remain. The Chapel is built on the site of the house
Fleetwood House, of early c17 origin, demolished in 1872. Abney Park Cemetery occupies the grounds. House was on the site of the Fire Station.
Abney Park Cemetery is approached through a magnificent gateway from the High Street. It is atmospheric secondary woodland with grass walks between graves but once inside, it is difficult to keep a sense of direction. The Cemetery opened in 1840 on an area used as an arboretum - it was needed because Bunhill Fields was full. Loddiges, Hackney nurserymen, laid the grounds out and Archbishop William Hoskins, an Australian who was Professor in the Art of Construction at King’s College, designed the site. The Architect was the administrator of Egyptologists of the Soane Museum and there are genuine hieroglyphics on the offices. The cemetery eventually declined during the 20th century. In 1939 the company was bankrupt, and the lodge and offices were burnt out. 1974 residents’ societies worked to save the cemetery from landscaping Site bought by the Council in 1979 for £1 and run as a nature reserve. Local groups interested in the wildlife as well as the historical value of the cemetery now participate in a management committee. South of the chapel is a small catacomb. There is also a mound where Isaac Watts used to sit – and Oliver Cromwell is supposed to be buried under it. North of the chapel very important Spreat tomb. A statue of Dr. Isaac Watts dates from 1840. He spent the last 36 years of his life as the Abneys' guest and His memorial in the middle of the cemetery has a eulogistic inscription by Dr. Johnson. On October 4th 1738 John and Charles Wesley visited him, and they sang and talked together as they walked in the grounds - the only known meeting between the two greatest hymn-writers of the 18th century, if not of all time. The cemetery also has the graves of General Booth, Samuel Morley of the college, Braidwood, Bramwell Booth, Catherine Booth, and Mary Hillam The woodland is valuable for bird life as it is the only large tree-covered area in the borough. The dense undergrowth is good for small mammals and insects, which in turn attract owls and bats. Hackney Brook runs through it. On the northern boundary is secondary woodland. Exotic trees - Bhutan pine, hybrid oak, service tree of Fontainebleau. Monterey cypress and stone pine. 30 breeding birds include gold crest, dove, kestrel, tawny owl, blackcap, spotted flycatcher, coal tit, bullfinch. Lots of ducklings although nearest pond half a mile away. Whitethroat, spotted woodpeckers, linnet, redpoll, speckled wood butterflies. Some unexploded bombs.
Mortuary Chapel Listed Grade II, Conservation Area Gothic Revival cemetery chapel. The Chapel is supposed to look like Beverley Minster and the spire of Bloxham church and the Interdenominational chapel was in the shape of a Greek cross.
Bouverie Road
Former chapel, in other use.
Church. 1936 by Scott.
Church Street
Inner city gentrification. The centre of the old village is still recalled by Church Street’s character and scatter of older houses, although the big mansions which stood in their own grounds have all gone. Smaller c18 houses were also built and examples of the changing style in terrace houses of the c18-c19 can still be spotted. Many retain good panelled rooms and staircases
95 home of Daniel Defoe. Plaque says 'novelist, lived in a house on this site'.
207-223, an urban stucco-trimmed quadrant of c. 1850-60, facing Clissold Park rehabilitated in 1996 by Pollard Thomas & Edwards
Abney Congregational Church. 1838 altered 1862, gutted in the Second World War. It has only parts of the walls.
Engine house in triangle of two roads
Fire Station on the site of Fleetwood House. 1662, Charles Fleetwood Commonwealth Commander in Chief, wife Bridget daughter of Cromwell, estate now the cemetery
Library 1892 – early borough library. Extended with children’s library and lecture theatre. War Memorial entrance hall. Bust of Defoe
London General Omnibus Co., premises under an arch now LB Hackney premises
Magpie and Stump. Early c20, with a forceful cranked gable, and original ground- and first-floor interiors.
Manor House with strange archway
Manor House, lay close to the church, on the site of the municipal buildings, disappeared already in the c18.
Manton House, with a curved side
LCC's Clissold Estate, 1937 by E. Armstrong.
Parish lock-up
Red Lion, was called Green Dragon Cage,
Sisters Place opposite the Town Hall, built by the Bridge sisters, Queen Anne
Vestry Offices and site of Abney Chapel
Watch house
Defoe Road
Daniel Defoe lived in Stoke Newington and is duly remembered
2 garage where private buses went from Hobbs garage, now a council depot. Defoe’s house site was next door
Fleetwood Road
Newington High Street
Follows the straight course of the Roman Ermine Street extended south by Stoke Newington Road towards Kingsland. Many Hassidic Jews. In the centre of Stoke Newington High Street the roadway narrows into a bottle-neck, but again widens out before ending at Stamford Hill. At the narrow congested junction with Church Street it retains some- thing of its pre-c19 character
125 Barracuda
176 The Fox Reformed
178 Coach and Horses
187 reconstructed behind the façade. Set back from the street behind big gateposts with urns. Probably built by Edward Lascelles, who built No. 189. c19, used as a dispensary.
187, 189, and 191, Later in institutional use, renovated in the 1980s, but only after they had stood empty and vandalized for twenty years and had lost most of their interior features.
191, also set back behind gate piers, has segment-headed windows. It was altered in the c19, when it was used first by the Infant Orphan Asylum and then as a female penitentiary.
Egg Stores
Jolly Butchers Pub 1850s bracketed ground floor
Rectory, opposite the station, 1821 Invalid asylum
Rochester Castle. Tall pub with good ground floor of c. 1900,
South Hornsey detached part of Stoke Newington but had own Local Board until 1900. West side of Stoke Newington High Street from Thyssen Road junction to junction of Farleigh Road. Western boundary along Nevill Road to Matthew Road no 18
Stoke Newington station. 1974. Railway line from Bethnal Green opened 1872 and then extended to Lower Edmonton.
Tanners Hall
Norcott Road
15. Largish (for Hackney) walled back garden developed by present owners over 25 years, with pond, long-established fruit trees,
Northwold Road
Chapel. Late 19th chapel, .
Oldfield Road
Board School 1881 looks very tall in relation to neighbouring two-storey Victorian housing. 1881-2, additions 1899,
Paradise Row?
William Allen home
Rectory Road
First Scott telephone box in the area erected outside the tennis club
Sanford Terrace dated 1788; renovation began privately in 1967 and continued by the borough after a public inquiry in 1971 which forbade demolition
112 Romantic town garden,
United Reformed Church. 1992. By Martin Heine of Craig, Hall & Rutley.
Rectory Road station. 1872. Between Stoke Newington and Hackney Downs on One Railway. Built by the Great Eastern Railway to serve the south part of Stoke Newington. Burnt down in 1972. In 1984 it was rebuilt in neo-vernacular style and all the original station removed. This was funded by Urban Aid. New street level and platform buildings and footbridge.
Sanford Road
Site of sandy ford of the Hackney Brook
Sanford Terrace
Stamford Hill
Birdcage pub has a good early c20 interior
Stoke Newington Station. 1872. Between Stamford Hill and Rectory Road on One Railway. Built on the railway line from Bethnal Green extended to Lower Edmonton. Current station is 1974-5 by .J. Fletcher of British Rail Eastern Region. Cheerful glass box, colourful inside. The platforms are in a cutting and new canopies have been provided there.
Stamford Hill Road
Means Stoney Ford over Hackney Brook
Stoke Newington
'New farm by the tree-stumps', the prefix distinguishing it from Highbury. Formerly the manor of Newton Barrow – ‘Neutone’ 1086, ‘Newinthon’ 1255, ‘Neweton Stoken’ 1274, ‘Stokneweton’ 1274
St.Paul’s. From Athelstan ‘new town in a wood’. By N. F. Cachemaille-Day, 1958-
Stoke Newington High Street
145 Rochester Castle. Wetherspoon's pub with up to seven guest beers on at any time. A quiet pub, where conversation rules, it is a welcome relief from the busy thoroughfare outside. The decorated tiled entrance and mosaic doorstep are worthy of a closer look. The natural light from the skylight allows for a relaxing read. The no-smoking conservatory leads out to the garden.
Stoke Newington Common
Great Eastern Railway goes through the centre. Used to be big house on brickfields. 1740 genuine remnant of commoners’ rights. Housing development late 1870s. Thin band of flint fragments in trenches. Buried hand axe industry
Cooke Almshouses - nice near Abney Park Cemetery 1890. Great Eastern Railway gave site with them. Were to enclose the common in a ‘gallery’. It was covered in but the Railway Company gave a bit of land in the southwest corner.
St Michael and All Angels. 1883-5 by J. E. K. Cutts;
Vicarage 1885.
Victorian Grove
A few early 19th villas, which must have faced open country when they were built.
The Victoria, low and two-storeyed, is still on an early c19 scale.
Victorian Road
Behind an arched screen, four robust mansion blocks. The wider spaces between the blocks are called Coronation Avenue and Imperial Avenue; the date must be c. 1901. Red brick with plain but decent Board-school-type detail, and slightly Arts and Crafts segmental hoods over the entrances. Probably by Joseph,
Housing by Pollard Thomas Edwards, 1993-4
Yoakley Road
Friends Meeting House 1828, almshouses 1835. William Alderson design. Demolished 1957 but cemetery behind remains.
Yoakley Almshouses were 1835 endowment. Next to the meeting house and demolished 1957. Now a Seventh Day Adventist church