Stoke Newington Church St

Church Path, Town Hall & West Reservoir: The third and final post from my walk on April 1st 1990. The previous post was Reservoir, Castle & Lordship Lane

Church path, The Old Church, St Mary's, Church, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4b-61 — *Church path, The Old Church, St Mary’s, Church, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4b-61*

The Old Church is the only remaining Elizabethan church in London, built in 1563 when the then Lord of the Manor decided to rebuild the near-derelict parish church, including a private chapel for him and his family. The Church was extensively restored in 1827-9 by Charles Barry who almost doubled its seating and replaced its wooden spire – not visible in my picture. But although much has changed it has retained its Tudor character.

The Old Church was heavily damaged in wartime bombing in October 1940, but repairs were made quickly and it was back in use only a couple of months later. Later there were more repairs and most of the box pews were removed. In 2013 the interior was remodelled to make it a flexible arts and community space.

The Old Church is on the right of my picture, rather overshadowed by its successor; there was a call by the end of the eighteenth century for a larger building to cope with the growing population of the area, but the new and much larger church was only opened in 1858. The new St Mary’s Stoke Newington was designed by George Gilbert Scott but its spire was completed by his son, J O Scott, in 1890. The building is in the Decorated style of the late C13/early C14 made popular by Pugin and the Ecclesiologist Movement. The Old Church became a ‘chapel of ease’ and has never been deconsecrated. Both churches are Grade II* listed.

*Monument, Church path, The Old Church, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4b-63*

One of the several impressive monuments in the churchyard around the Old Church, but I cannot make out the names of those buried here – though one of them died in 1789.

Several people prominent in the abolition of the slave trade have their graves here including James Stephen (William Wilberforce’s brother-in-law, a lawyer and chief adviser on the anti-slavery bill) and Wilberforce’s sister and daughter. He also asked to be buried here but when he died it was decided he should be in Westminster Abbey.

Two tombs in the cemetery are Grade II listed, that of James Stephen and of the Romantic woman poet and abolitionist Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) and her ‘beloved brother’, John Aikin (1747-1822)

*Stoke Newington Town Hall, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4b-65*

Stoke Newington Town Hall is an impressive municipal building, designed by J Reginald Truelove as the Town Hall for the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington and built in 1935-7 and still in use as council offices.

On its noticeboards are fly-posters from the TKiH, the Türkiye Komünist isci Hareketi, Communist Workers’ Movement of Turkey, illegal in Turkey. Founded in 1984 it merged with other Turkish groups in 1994 to form the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, MLKP who still appear in force in London’s May Day March.

*West Reservoir, Lordship Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4b-55*

I returned to the West Reservoir and took a walk around it – I think this picture shows the New River at right and was taken from a bridge over it. There appears to be a channel with a sluice gate joining the reservoir and the river just beyond the skip in the centre of the picture.

*West Reservoir, Lordship Rd, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1990, 90-4b-31*

And I think this view was from more or less the same place but looking in the opposite direction, with the New River now in the foreground and council estates and solid blocks of council flats at Woodberry Down, a huge LCC estate built immediately after the war and now redeveloped.

This wasn’t quite the end of my walk, as I made my way back to Manor House station from here, and I took my final picture of the day going down the escalator there – but it was not worth digitising. For my next walk I returned to south London.

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Highbury to Stoke Newington Church Street: Continuing my walk from Sunday 1st October 1989 which had begun at Finsbury Park and continued to the Nags Head before returning to Finsbury Park. The previous post ended on Blackstock Road.

House, Kelross Rd, Northolme Rd, Highbury, Islington, 1989 89-10b-46 — *House, Kelross Rd, Northolme Rd, Highbury, Islington, 1989*

Blackstock Road continues south into Highbury as Highbury Park and I walked some way down this before turning east into Northolme Road. Highbury Park was developed in the 1870s but the houses in Northholme Road date from the 1890s. This and neighbouring roads were built on the Holm Estate and the LCC applied for permission to develop these roads in 1890.

North Holme is near Helmsley, North Riding of Yorkshire and although it has been described as a “township” is a small cluster of buildings, more a farm than even a village close to the River Dove. “The Revd Joseph Parker, DD (1830-1902) … lived in 1866 at a house in Highbury Park he called ‘North Holme‘. The sites of Northolme Road, Sotheby Road and Ardilaun Road were on part of the grounds of his house.” He was the “Minister of the City Temple, 1869-1901, author, preacher and twice
Chairman of the Congregational Union“.

This house is at the eastern end of Northolme Road, where it meets Kelross Road and is a detached villa rather larger than the terraces along long the rest of the road.

*Clissold Park, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-35*

From here Kelross passage leads to Highbury New Park, a street with villas built from around 1850. But I pressed on across it into Collins Road, making my way towards Clissold Park and Stoke Newington Church St.

Clissold House was built as Paradise House for Quaker City merchant Jonathan Hoare, a noted philanthropist and anti-slavery campaigner and brother of banker Samuel Hoare Jr. The water here was a stretch of the New River which brought clean drinking water from Hertfordshire to London, but I think at some point the river here was culverted, although the bridge taking Stoke Newington Church St across it remained until the 1930s.

The park was first created as grounds for this GradeII listed house. Hoare got into financial difficulties and lost the house and grounds, which passed through several owners before being owned by Augustus Clissold. When he died in 1882 the estate was bought by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who intended to make money from developing it as housing, but the Metropolitan Board of Works were persuaded in 1887 to buy it to be a public park.

By 1989 the house and park were in a poor condition and Clissold House was put on English Heritages ‘at risk’ register in 1991. Since then both park and house have been restored with the aid of lottery money.

*Park Crescent, Spensley Walk, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-23*

Grade II listed Park Crescent at 207-223 Stoke Newington Church Street was built in 1855, but by the 1980s was in a very dilapidated state and became home to around 90 squatters alongside only a handful of legal tenants. The houses were then owned by Hackey council who planned to sell them to housing associations.

*Park Crescent, Spensley Walk, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10b-11*

Three motorbikes parked outside one of the houses of Park Crescent. You can clearly see the poor state of the buildings which need Acrow props to support the porches, with the steps at right being roped off to block access to the unsafe building.

Park Crescent now looks very neat and tidy compared to this.

*Shops, 185-189, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10c-51*

The building at 185 Stoke Newington Church St had been sold when I made this picture in October 1989, but The Modern Man, a hairdressers, was still alive in another shop on the street, shown in my next picture.

This row of buildings with ground-floor shops is still there and like the rest of the area has become rather better kept and is now that epitome of gentrification, an estate agents which has also expanded into 187.

Perhaps surprisingly the 5 Star Cleaners at 189 is still a dry cleaners, though under a different name.

*The Modern Man, Stoke Newington Church St, Stoke Newington, Hackney, 1989 89-10c-52*

I found The Modern Man still in business at 121 Stoke Newington Church St at the corner with Marton Road. It didn’t survive the gentrification of the area and the shop has passed through several hands as ‘frere jacques’, ‘search and rescue, ‘Ooh Lou Lou Cakery’ and ‘The Caffeine Fix’.

I don’t know how long Tanya’s Cafe-Diner Take away lasted but around 2009 it became Lydia Cafe Restaurant and retained the name Lydia until recently becoming ‘The Tiffin Tin.’.

My walk was almost at an end, but I’ll share are few more pictures in a later post.

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Tag: Stoke Newington Church St

Church Path, Town Hall & West Reservoir – 1990

Highbury to Stoke Newington Church Street – 1989