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Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. In modern terms it can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area (though this also includes parts of Stamford Hill and the almost extinct district of Shacklewell). Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too.

However, Stoke Newington was once a well-defined administrative unit. In 1899 the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington was formed out of the greater part of the parish of Stoke Newington. The resulting boundaries seem rather anomalous now; the entire eastern side of Stoke Newington High Street and beyond, including Stoke Newington Common, were included in the next door Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, but in fact this area was already part of the parish of Hackney - not Stoke Newington - and much of it would have been regarded as being in Shacklewell at the time. These apparent oddities became moot when in 1965, the Metropolitan Borough became part of the London Borough of Hackney.

Throughout all these changes, the core of Stoke Newington, centred around Stoke Newington Church Street, has retained its own distinct 'London village' character, and indeed, commentators such as Nikolaus Pevsner have confessed that they find it hard to see the district as being in London at all.

Open space

For one small district, Stoke Newington is endowed with a generous amount of open space. To its north, there is the extensive West Reservoir, now a non-working facility, but open for leisure and surrounded by greenspace, at the entrance to which is the architecturally bizarre Castle Climbing Centre, once the main Water Board pumping station. It was originally designed to look like a towering Scottish castle, and is now much-loved in the area.

South of these facilities is Clissold Park, an extensive swathe of parkland complete with a small menagerie, aviary and the original manor house. Tracking east from here and past the two Church of England parish churches (Stoke Newington was greedy enough to retain the old one, unusual in a London parish) leads to Abney Park Cemetery, one of the most splendid and enlightened of Victorian London cemeteries. It is now a nature reserve, a role that it was in many ways originally intended for, as it was set up as an arboretum. Finally, across the high street to the east is the fragmented Stoke Newington Common. This, however, has its charms, largely due to the extensive and diverse programme of tree planting it has enjoyed in recent years.

Liquid assets

From the 16th century on, Stoke Newington has played a prominent role in assuring a water supply to sustain London's rapid growth. Hugh Myddleton's New River runs through the area and still makes a contribution to London's water. Although this originally terminated at the New River Head in Finsbury, since 1946 its main flow has ended at the reservoirs, though a slow ornamental trickle flows past the West Reservoir to go underground for a stretch on Green Lanes, reappearing for a time in Clissold Park only to disappear underground again on its way to Canonbury. The river bank, New River Walk, can be walked for some distance to the north through Haringey and on to Enfield, though not all sections are open.

The East and West Reservoirs, to the north of Clissold Park, are quite substantial for urban facilities. They were constructed in 1833 to purify the New River water and to act as a water reserve. As mentioned, the West Reservoir is now a leisure facility, offering sailing, canoeing and other water sports, plus Royal Yachting Association- approved sailing courses. Its local pump station is set out as a visitor centre, with a café, and pieces of the old hydraulic machinery can be viewed in the main pump hall. The other main pumping station at the reservoir gates, now a climbing centre (as mentioned above) was designed in its distinctive castellated style by William Chadwell Mylne (a past Snell Exhibitioner) sand built in 1856.

Besides the water board facilities and the New River, Clissold Park also contains two large ornamental lakes, a home to many water birds and a population of terrapins. These lakes are all that is left to mark the course of the Hackney Brook, one of London's lost rivers, which once flowed from west to east across Stoke Newington on its way to the River Lea - in flood at this point it was known to span 10 metres. The two lakes are not actually fed from the brook, which has long disappeared into the maze of sewers under London, but from the mains supply - ultimately the New River.

History

Stoke Newington or 'new town in the wood', has been lightly settled for many hundreds of years, close to larger neighbouring Saxon settlements near the River Lea. In the nineteenth century it was discovered that Stoke Newington Common and Abney Park Cemetery had been part of a neolithic working area for axe-making, some examples of which can be seen in the Museum of London. In the middle ages and Tudor times it was a very small village a few miles from the city of London, frequently visited by wayfarers as a pit stop before journeying North. At this date the whole Manor was owned by St. Paul's Cathedral and yielded a small income, enough to support part of their work. During the 17th century the Cathedral sold the Manor to William Patten who became the first Lord of the Manor. His initials 'WP' and the motto 'ab alto' can be seen inscribed above the doorway of the old church next to Clissold Park. A century later it passed to Lady Mary Abney who drew up the first detailed maps of field boundaries and began to lay out a manorial parkland behind today's Fire Station on Church Street, with the aid of Dr Isaac Watts and her daughters.

During the early 19th century, as London expanded, the Manor of Stoke Newington was 'enfranchised' to be sold in parcels as freehold land for building purposes. Gradually the village became absorbed into the seamless expansion of London. It was no longer a separate village by the mid to late 1800s.

Being on the 'outskirts' at this time, many expensive and large houses were built to house London's expanding population of nouveau riche whose journey to the commercial heart of the capital was made possible by the birth of the railways and the first Omnibuses. The latter were first introduced into central London in the 1820s by George Shillibeer, following his successful trial in a more limited capacity of the first school bus in the world for William Allen and Susannah Corder's novel Quaker school at Fleetwood House, Abney Park in Stoke Newington.

St Mary's Lodge on Lordship Road - the 1843 home of noted architect and District Surveyor John Young - is the last-surviving of several grand detached homes built in the area around that time for well-off members of the new commuter class.

As a late Victorian and Edwardian suburb, Stoke Newington prospered, and continued in relative affluence and civic pride with its own municipal government until changes brought about by the Second World War.

Gibson Gardens, an early example of quality tenement buildings erected for the housing of 'the industrious classes' were built off Stoke Newington High Street in 1880 and still stand today.

Second world war

During World War II, much of the area was damaged in the Blitz, and many were made homeless, although the level of destruction was much lower than in those areas of East London further south, such as Stepney or Shoreditch, or even in next-door Hackney. The death toll, too, was relatively low, almost three-quarters of civilian deaths being due to one tragic incident on 13 October 1940, when a crowded shelter, at Coronation Avenue off the high street, received a direct hit. The memorial to all the residents of the Borough who died in the air raids, including local Jewish people, can be seen in Abney Park Cemetery. And (like Hackney and Tottenham), Stoke Newington avoided most of the later V-weapon attacks, which fell disproportionately on South London; only a total of seven V-1s and two V-2s hit the then borough.

So most of the historic buildings at the heart of Stoke Newington survived, at least in a repairable state. A notable exception was the classically grand Parish Church of West Hackney, St James's, on Stoke Newington High Street, which dated from 1824. This was so severely damaged in the October 1940 bombing that the entire church had to be demolished, never to be rebuilt. It was replaced after the war by a much more modest structure, St Paul's, which is set well back from the street. Traces of the old church's stonework can still be seen facing the High Street.

Postwar developments

After the war a substantial amount of residential housing, particularly to the east of modern Stoke Newington; in Hackney borough at the time, had been either destroyed or left in such a bad state that it was seen by the urban planners of that era, as better to demolish it. Postwar redevelopment has replaced many of these areas with large estates, some more successful than others. Much of this residential redevelopment was planned by Frederick Gibberd, the designer of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.

Ever a home to radicals, Communist Party meetings were held in the Town Hall in the post-war years. And although Stoke Newington became part of the London Borough of Hackney in 1965, it has never quite lost its own identity. Indeed, following the 1960s, it increasingly became home to a number of squatters, artists, bohemians and also political radicals. Famously, the "Stoke Newington 8" were arrested on 20 August 1971 at 359 Amhurst Road for suspected involvement in The Angry Brigade bombings.

The most famous examples of political terrorism by Stoke Newington residents, none originally from the area are Patrick Hayes, Jan Taylor and Muktar Said Ibrahim. The first two were convicted of two bombings and had substantial links to the huge lorry bombs of the 1990’s. Both were arrested, firing at officers in Walford Road and later sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. The second Muktar Said Ibrahim was arrested in Farleigh Road suspected of planting the failed bomb on the 26 bus, misfiring later in Shoreditch on the 21st July 2005.

These days, Stoke Newington is a very multicultural area, with large Asian, Irish, Turkish, Jewish and Afro-Caribbean communities.

The area continues to be home to many new and emerging communities such as Kosovan immigrants from what once was Yugoslavia.

It is also worth noting that Stoke Newington has one of the largest gay and lesbian (particularly lesbian) communities in London.

People associated with Stoke Newington

  • Marc Bolan (musician - lived on Stoke Newington Common until age 15)
  • Clem Cattini (musician - born in Stoke Newington)
  • Sir Horace Cutler (politician - born in the district)
  • John Diamond (journalist and radio presenter - born in Stoke Newington)
  • Daniel Defoe (writer - born and lived on Church Street. His gravestone can be seen in Stoke Newington Public Library).
  • Paul Foot (political activist and writer - born in Palestine, lived in Stoke Newington)
  • Jean Marsh (actress and TV writer)
  • Warren Mitchell (actor - born in the district)
  • David O'Leary (football manager and Arsenal FC appearance record holder - born in Stoke Newington)
  • Edgar Allan Poe (writer - attended Manor School on Church Street around 1820. His stay in the area provides the background for the popular 2004 novel, The American Boy, by Andrew Taylor).
  • Isaac Watts (theologian, logician, hymnwriter - lived and died at Abney House)
  • Barbara Windsor (actress in EastEnders & Carry On films - born in Shoreditch but grew up around Amhurst Road)

Listed buildings

Although Stoke Newington contains only one Grade I listed building (St Matthias' Church), it includes more Grade II* buildings than any other single district of Hackney. Unsurprisingly, given its nature, residential buildings are strongly represented, and this becomes even more clear when the lowest grade, Grade II, is considered, where almost whole streets are listed in some cases.

Grade I

  • St Matthias' Church, Wordsworth Road

Grade II*

  • 187-191 Stoke Newington High Street
  • 81/83 Stoke Newington Church Street
  • 85/87 Stoke Newington Church Street
  • St Mary's Old Church
  • St Mary's New Church
  • Clissold House, Clissold Park
  • St Andrew's Church, Bethune Road
  • The Castle Climbing Centre, Green Lanes

Grade II (selective)

  • Stoke Newington Town Hall and Library
  • Abney Park Mortuary Chapel
  • Unitarian Church, Newington Green

There are many Grade II listed properties on Stoke Newington Church Street, the historical heart of the district, and two other notable residential streets to the west of the district — Albion Road and Clissold Road — are replete with listed houses.

Schools

Primary schools

Secondary schools

Nearest places

Note: Stoke Newington should not be confused with Newington in south London.

Transport

External links

Districts of London | Hackney | Stoke Newington

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Stoke Newington".

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