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.
For one small district, Stoke Newington is almost embarrassingly endowed with 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 CofE 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.
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 and 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.
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.
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.
After the war a substantial amount of residential housing, particularly to the east of modern Stoke Newington — which was 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. Most famously, the "Stoke Newington 8" were arrested on
20 August 1971 at 359 Amhurst Road for suspected involvement in
The Angry Brigade bombings.
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 .
- Marc Bolan (musician — lived on Stoke Newington Common until age 15)
- Daniel Defoe (writer — born and lived on Church Street. His gravestone can be seen in Stoke Newington Public Library).
- Jean Marsh (actress and TV writer)
- Warren Mitchell (actor — born in the district)
- 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)
- Horace Cutler (politician — born in the district)
- Barbara Windsor (actress in EastEnders & Carry On Films — born in Shoreditch but grew up around Amhurst Road)
- John Diamond (journalist and radio presenter — born in Stoke Newington)
- Paul Foot (political activist and writer — born in Palestine, lived in Stoke Newington)
- David O'Leary (football manager and Arsenal FC appearance record holder — born in Stoke Newington)
- Clem Cattini (musician — born in Stoke Newington)
- 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.
- St Matthias' Church, Wordsworth Road
- 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
(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.
- Primary School s: Benthal Junior , Betty Layward Primary , Grasmere Primary , Grazebrook Primary, Holmleigh Primary , Princess May Primary, Jubilee Primary , Simon Marks Jewish Primary, Sir Thomas Abney, Saint Mary's Church of England Primary, Saint Matthias Church of England Primary, and William Patten Primary .
- , Our Lady's Convent High, Skinner's Company, and Tawhid Boys .
Note: Stoke Newington should not be confused with
Newington in
South London .
