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Bentham Road
Gascoyne Estate, 1950s London County Council housing. First slab block inspired by Le Corbusier. Brutalist block first use of Alton like forms in Hackney. Large and protracted LCC/GLC post-war enterprise (1947 onwards). The most impressiveelements are near the end of Bentham Road: the two earliest ofthe tall slab blocks, built 1952-4, when the LCC Architect's Department was at its most adventurous. The engineer was F.J. Samuely. Eleven storeys. The airy open ground floors and shaped roof tanksproclaim their Corbusian allegiance; the projecting balconies withpattern of supporting beams give some life to the huge whitefacades. As at contemporary Roehampton, the slabs have theinnovation of economic narrow-fronted maisonettes (12 ft 3 in.wide), much copied in later blocks.
4-28 1860. 1860-2,mark the shift from classical to tentative Gothic detail, withcoloured brickwork and pointed hoodmoulds
Berger Road
Berger’s
Bohemia Place
Clapton bus garage
Brenthouse Road.
Hackney Synagogue 1896. By Delissa Joseph, enlarged 1936. Red brick with stone bands, triple-arched side entrance with pediment above. Stately galleried interior lit by clerestory lunette windows.
Brent House. More appealing 1931-2 by IanHamilton. Behind nice railings. A compact, decently detailed four-and five-storey block in a Neo-Georgian spirit; three ranges arounda small garden, built for Bethnal Green and East London HousingAssociation
Bridge Water
Bridge over the brook
Cassland Road
20-54 Hackney Terrace. Curved rooms. A semi-circle of 1860s villas comes as a surprise. It is the earliest survival in this area, a symmetrical composition of 1792-1801 of plain three-storey houses with simple fanlights. Central pediment with Coade stone garlands and the arms of the three developers, which included their architect, William Fellowes. The enterprise was organized as a building society with subscribers, a very early example, and the houses had originally not only private gardens but a communal pleasure ground behind. It is a shame that Cassland Road carries such heavy
South Hackney Upper School. Grand design of London School Board. 1902 T.Bailey. Now sixth-form centre. Magnificent Wrenaissance front with rusticated arches and pilasters and lavish use of cream terracotta. Handsome contemporary walls and railings. As elsewhere in London, the type developed from the 1870s, to the full-blown formal three-decker compositions of T.J. Bailey of the 1890s and beyond.
Chatham Place
Continues past dour c 20 flats and factories on the sites of c19 villas.
St.Luke’s church. 1871 random ragstone. By Newman & Billing, routine Decorated random ragstone. Early English. Tower and spire 1882; the corner turret has its own bulky spirelet. Stained glass window 1950 by H. Vemon Spreadbury.
Hackney Free and Parochial School. 1811. Rows with other schools. Lots of fights with other boys. School moved in 1895 building became a laundry and then a furniture factory. Demolished 1969.
27 Burberry Factory Shop
Morningside School. 1884 Board school. Tall, with turrets. A large variety of lively skylines still tower above Hackney's streets of Victorian terraces and their c20 replacements. As elsewhere in London, the type developed from the 1870s, with E. R. Robson's picturesque asymmetrical buildings in the tradition of Philip Webb
Christchurch Square
1969-76 is by the same firm as Gore Road. Friendly brown brick low-rise housing on the site of a demolished church.
Church Crescent
Buildings of the 1840s by George Wales, surveyor to the estate.
St.John of Jerusalem. Landmark for the Luftwaffe – towards the end of the war the spire was demolished by a rocket which exploded prematurely in mid-air. The present green copper covered spire was lowered into place by helicopter. An Ambitious high church development. South Hackney Parish Church By E. C. Hakewill, 1845-8. A large church on a prominent island site, an ambitious High Church replacement of the Well Street chapel of ease of 1806-10. Kentish rag walls with Speldhurst dressings. Cruciform, with a big tower.. The original broach spire lost in World War II was replaced by a slender one by Cachemaille-Day. Interior on the grandest scale; the detail mostly Early English. quite progressive for the 1840s, but in places curious rather than good, see the odd clerestory tracery. Broad aisled nave with tightly placed columns, some circular, some octagonal, but not rationally ordered. Some competent stiff-leaf carving. Deep transepts now subdivided flank a vast crossing with intersecting timber roof. The chancel is apsed, with a stone vault. A black and white mosaic floor of 1893 dominates nave and aisles, exceptionally wide in the centre to allow for free seats, since removed. The sturdy poppy-head pews were probably originally closer together. The stalls have in addition musical angels. Stained glass All post-war, attributed to M. C. Farrer Bell; apse with the theme of healing. Transept with prophets, transept with St Augustine, Cranmer, Wesley and William Temple. Monument to Rev. H.H. Norris 1850, the first rector. Brass in a quatrefoil recording that 'the church erected mainly through him is a monument to his zeal for the beauty of holiness'. His portrait is in the transept. Like the stone the church is built with, most of the names of the roads around the church come from villages around Tunbridge Wells in Kent. It seems that John de Kewer, who gave the site for the church, came from a Kentish family.
Tunbridge Wells - Kentish place names round about. The man who built the church came from there
Semi-detached housing by Colquhoun Miller - interesting, but forbidding.
Monger Almshouses rebuilt in 1847-8. Tudor doorways, shaped central gable, and an oriel with lozenge glazing. Before turning right across Well Street Common, you originally built in 1670, for the use of six poor men over sixty years old. The widow of Sir John Cass got into trouble in 1732, when she allowed some women to lodge there. The building was entirely rebuilt in the middle of the 19th century, although some of the original stonework was re-used. In Cass Charity.
1-2 villas are of the same date as the almshouses also Tudor, with gables,
Group with echo the villa form semi-detached white-rendered by Suhoun & Miller, 1981-4, with dramatic deep eaves overhanging off set balconies and Mackintosh-inspired detail.
Churchwell walk
Railway has interesting brickworks diagonally
Clapton Passage
Corner Clapton road was the large house Priestly lived in 1791. Red brick wall is probably a remnant of it.
Collent Road
A handsome warehouse, for James Taylor dated 1893. Facing bricks.
Cresset Road
Lennox House. Experimental post war housing By J.E.M. McGregor, the Professor of Architecture at Cambridge. Ideas that space below the flats should be used for market to subsidise the rents. Remarkable 1937. built for the Bethnal Green and East LondonHousing Association. A friendly brick ziggurat of pantile-roofedflats with stepped-out private balconies, cantilevered out overcovered central space, which was intended for a market. Traditional materials conceal an innovative reinforced concretestructure, precursor of the type of plan and mixed uses develooedin more monumental fashion for the Brunswick Centre, its 1960s successors. in Cresset Road, is an unusual
Cardinal Pole school annexe. In the buildings of the old French hospital. Old Huguenot foundation. Now a Catholic school. Built for 4-0 men and 20 women replacing building in Old Street.
Elsdale Road
Maternity and welfare clinic. Period piece by the Borough Engineer. Percival Holt, Streamlined, brown brick. 1938-9.
Flanders Way
Berger School. ILEA. Homerton, has low clustered polygonal pavilions with little pyramid roofs.
Frampton Park Estate
Straggle of slabs of various ages and heights. Earlier parts of 1953 by theLCC; continued in the 1960s by the GLC.
Pitcairn House
Fremont Street
A tight enclave of stuccoed terraces begun in the 1850s but mostly datingfrom the 1860s.
Gascoyne Road
LCC flats completed 1947, are five-storeyed, with a series of projecting balconies, a little more imaginative in design than the average at that time. On sun balconies and agreeable views
Homerton Station. 1st October 1868. Between Hackney Wick and Hackney Central. North London Line Silverlink. North London Railway. Although smaller the original station building would have been like those still at Hackney Central and Camden Road. The present station was built when passenger services were restored to the North London Line in the 1980s.. The original entrance in Barnabas Road was part of a huge single storey building, taller than the adjoining railway bridge. At track level, it was protected by canopies which stretched about two-thirds of the platforms' length. By 1898, the demand for Workmen's Tickets had become very heavy and the Sweetmeat Automatic Delivery Company were asked to supply dispensing machines at certain stations and such was the need here that two were installed. it closed with the rest of the line in 1944. After closure, the structure became dangerous, and although it survived into the 1950s, it was eventually demolished. Following the re-introduction of passenger services over the line, a new station opened on 13th May 1985 on the site of its predecessor, and uses the original passenger subway, but the platforms are shorter. The rebuilding was approved by the GLC Transport Committee in January 1984, and cost £440 000 to complete, with the necessary finance provided by the Hackney Partnership Scheme. The lower section of original frontage remains standing, and there is a worn down stone step, which once led into the booking office.
Cattle creep Beneath the west end of the platforms runs a very low arch, which was constructed as a cattle creep and provides a souvenir of the early days of the line when cows grazed in nearby meadows
Gore Road
Terraces and infilling. Uniform stucco trimmed around Victoria Park 1845
Kenton Road
Was built up with regular terraces in the 1860s,
Shrubberies. Managed by Hackney District Board
Kenton Arms. Cheerfully flourishing a decorative corner gable with swags and prettycornice.
Kenworthy Road
Immaculate Heart of Mary. 1873. 1952. Only walls stone. Convent of the Sacred Heart. Began as a country house, and still has a five-bay wing of c. 1800; arched first-floor windows on the E side, a shallow bow much hemmed in.
Lauriston Road
c19 realignment of Grove Street, an oldroute, runs through a well-preserved enclavedeveloped from the 1860s by the Norris estate, with spaciouslylaid out streets of stuccoed villas. .the roads around the perimeter of the park were laid out by theCrown Commissioners at the same time as the park, but development was slow
Trinity congregational church. 1901. By P. Morley Harder. Red brick and sandstone, in a late Gothic style.
Earl of Ellesmere. Possible old Godson’s Brewery.
Jews Cemetery. High walls. Hambro Synagogue. Granite sarcophagi on paws. Closed 1886.
The Workshop
Slips. Managed Hackney District Board
Triangle, Managed Hackney District board
Pottery and turning point for horse trams
Independent Chapel. Ground Managed by Hackney District Board
Assemblies of God. Was Hampden Chapel. 1847. ASSEMBLIES OF GOD Dignified Italianate stuccoed front; projecting centre with Venetian window and pediment.
Loddiges Road
Lot about Loddiges. 12743-1826
Mare Street
Mare Street. ‘Merestret’ 1443, ‘Meerstreete’ 1593, ‘Mayre street’ 1605, ‘Marestreete’ 1621, that is 'street of houses or hamlet on the boundary', from Middle English ‘mere’ and ‘strete’. Mare Street is now the main street of Hackney, but was originally a small hamlet at the extreme south of the parish where the road meets the border with Bethnal Green. Like so many old commercial thoroughfares, is a late c19 and Edwardian jumble with neglected late Georgian frontages visible intermittently above shop fronts?
224-228 a late c18 group dating from 1780-1, built by Joseph Sparkman.
Bus Depot site of black and white house. Hackney Brook through the grounds
Meynell Crescent
1890s
Meynall Gardens
Hampstead Garden Suburb cottages. 1932. Remnants of previous house in the gardens. A.Savill picturesquely laid out at the end of the common.A nice oasis of the site of a house of 1787 - some remnants remain in gardens.
Morning Lane
Money Lane on Roque.
Corner was the Green Man.
Morning Lane
Chatham Place was country lane.
North is the valley of the Hackney Brook.
watercress beds. Several long ditches, or rather trenches, filled with running water. one of the artificial streams for the continual growth of watercresses for the London market.
Houses built by Fox.
Paragon road
Hackney Free and Parochial Church of England School. Early post war secondary school replacing 1811 building, 1951. By Howard V. Lobb & Partners, 1951, a very early post-war secondary school, replacing a building of 1811. A compact spine range with two projecting arms, one with the hall, planned so that it could be used separately. One to three storeys, brick, decently detailed in the quiet modern of the 50s; library fittings by Gordon Russell. Extended 1995 by Barren & Smith. Science block, English department and gymnasium.
71-83 an attractive group built 1809-13; half-stuccoed pairs of three storeys, with low entrance links with broad doorways behind four Doric columns. The inspiration must be Michael Searles's similarly arranged Paragon, Blackheath. Surprising ogee-arched fanlights. The development was on land of St Thomas's Hospital, Southwark, and the design possibly by the hospital surveyor Samuel Robinson, or by the builder Robert Collins.
Post Office 1928. Changed use. Tall stretched-out Neo-Georgian
Penshurst Road
Penshurst Arms dated 1864.
Ram Place
Gravel Pit Chapel where Priestly preached. 1790s. Wedged between other building as industrial use. Board school on site of Gravel Pit. 1810 new chapel built. Faces towards Morning Lane. The Gravel Pit Chapel was established as a small break-away group in 1804 from the Ram's Chapel, Homerton. The Old Gravel Pit community were a Congregationalist group. In 1810 they took the lease on the Morning Lane site. By 1853 the congregation had quadrupled and an extension was built. However in the 1860's with the congregation increasing all the time and the lease expiring in 1871, it became clear that new premises would have to be found. Besides this the building was found to be in an alarmingly precarious structural condition. This was discovered by an old man who dozing off one Sunday, so the story goes, felt the pillar against which he had rested his head move. He reported this to the church authorities and it was discovered that rather than supporting the ceiling the pillar in question was actually hanging from it, as were several others in the building. Considerations of safety accelerated the decision to move. The Old Gravel Pit Chapel saw its last service on 23rd April 1817 and the new chapel in Lower Clapton was inaugurated on 26th April 1871.
Plaque to Jospeh Priestley, 1733-1804 which says 'scientist, philosopher and theologian, was Minister to the Gravel Pit Meeting here in 1793-1794' . Priestly was born in Fieldhead nr Leeds, and is best known as the chemist who discovered oxygen, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid and sulphur dioxide. As well as for their individual uses, he claimed he improved methods for studying gases, in order to benefit mankind. Later, as a result of a religious experience, he became a Unitarian Minister. The Gravel Pit Meeting, was a large gathering of like minded people who supported the aims and principles of the French Revolution. Priestly, for his part, preached a like revolution for Britain, this wasn't exactly appreciated by those in power. They, via the local police, organised a mob to ransack his home and fire it. In 1794 he was persuaded to emigrate to America,where he was given a hero's welcome. Plaque erected 1985.
Retreat Road
Site of pond where the brook went
Junction with Mead Place Retreat Almshouses 1821 for dissenting widows. Gothic revival. Bombed and demolished
Rowe Lane
17 A family home with sustainable attributes including natural building materials, harvested rainwater, a frame that uses European larch, a timber pellet boiler and cedar-clad roof.
Shore Road
Once called Water Gruel Way
18 site of Shore House now gone. 1570 belonged to the Knights Templars.
19 bits of the old mansion house found in the gardens
South Hackney Common
Was Lammas Lands so common land but shut off for a lot of the year.
St. Thomas’s Place
Between the gravestones and the strip ofgreen. A typical stucco-trimmedterrace dated 1859, with earlier reset stone of 1807.
Urswick Road
Was Upper Homerton Road. Truant board school.
Valette Street
Valette House London County Council flats. 1906 on site of Jerusalem Square behind it, in Valette Street, tall very plain built for those displaced by the widening of Mare Street.
Hackney Trades Hall 1912 built as HQ of Friendly Society
Victoria Park Road
Anarray of plain mid-Victorian detached villas,
220 Bedford Hotel 1870, givencharacter by its paired arched windows to the upper floors.
Royal Hotel. Stuccoed
The Falcon and Firkin Brewery one of a group of pubs in London – which were owned by Midsummer Leisure - which brew three or more ales, to the same recipes, in each of their pubs.
Shopping centre. Liberties type shop. Behind it where the horse drawn trams turned round. Pottery was a Coach House - the Metropolitan Tramway Company’s drivers’ restroom.
Hackney Forge
Parkside Library. 1964 Gibberd
Cardinal Pole School. An annex occupies the former French Hospital by R. L. Roumieu, 1865. Built to house forty men and twenty women over sixty, replacing an earlier building in Old Street. Brick, with dark brick diapering. Broad composition, with picturesque Franco-Flemish central tower and Franco-Flemish dormer windows. Very beefy.
Warneford Street
A tight enclave of stuccoed terraces begun in the 1850s but mostly datingfrom the 1860s.
Water Lane
Brook along it skirting Berger Factory
Lord Nelson was the Woolpack Brewery. On the site of the brook by a bridge. Viaduct of the railway goes over what was the brewery yard.
Wyke Estate built by London County Council on the site of the Berger factory
Berger's Paints. one of the largest local industries,established on land off Shepherd's Lane in 1780, and surviving hereuntil c.1960
Well Street
Centre of an old hamlet. Marked by a jumble of low shops and street market. With the typical c19 development ofsmall industrial concerns behind.
Well Street slips
8 Features in films 'Born Romantic’.
152 site of the Eagles where Morley MP and father, the Nottingham hosier, lived.
Magnificent board school. Opposite site of charity schools
Shuttleworth’s Hotel includes the Hand in Hand and the Widows’ Home. Asylums for the Jews, which also became warehouses.
Next door Hackney Depot was LGOC Horse Tram Depot
Market
Junction with Palace road where Forsyth House is was site of Priory of St.John of Jerusalem. Supposed to have been a Pilgrim Rest place. Gone by 1831.
Well Street Common
One of the few green areas in East London where there are no adjacent towers of flats to diminish the sense of space. one of the old stretches of common land which have survived . On a quiet evening you can almost see the sheep munching away. Elms gone. Last bit of old Hackney Park. Path to South Hackney. Probably a well at cottage place near where St.John of Jerusalem Priory was.
Estate & Cassland Estate. Probably called Botany Bay & charity of Sir John Cass. Thomas Cass father was carpenter to the Royal Ordnance. Mr. Cass lived in Lauriston Road or before it was built 1690s. French Hospital in garden of old rectory. M.M.Harris.
Wick Road
Jumble of low shops and street market