SHOREDl11, & HOX HACKNEY 24 Haxton Garden WALKS NQ4 23 Haxton Hall 25 GeffryeAlmshouses _§Op------------- 18 StJohn'sChurch 22 Britannia Theatre site 19 EnfieldBuildings 21 Haxton House St John's Church 16 The Varieties Music Hall 14 Aske Almshouses I Shoreditch is an ancient London parish and Hoxton was 15 PitfieldStreet Library 14- i�==- 1' a hamlet just outside the City walls. From the new 12 Generating Hall CHAln" :ST: 1-- <( , 8 Haxton Square x I London Bridge the Romans drove a road due North to 8 O o / , their legionary fortress at Lincoln-Shoreditch High 11 Haxton Market 13 Charles Square I� Street and Kingsland Road follow the line of Ermine � Ii � � � 4 Shoreditch Town Hall LJ!_l,,,LJ��o� h �� 1 Street-and another marched across the fields outside 1 St Leonard's Church V/ the city wall towards Colchester. They crossed at 7 Congregational Chapel Shoreditch, just North of what became the Bishop's 3 BoundaryEstate Gate. There has been a village here ever since. 6 The Tramshed · We are suggesting a circular walk fromthe cross­ roads at Shoreditch Church, through the old village of Hoxton and back by Kingsland Road. As you will see from the map, you can choose when you reach Hoxton i''1 o 5 Site of The Theatre and l[;J ��o Street (20) to returnstraight to the Town Hall in Old Holywe/1 Priory ]ZJ��:.. � Street. The whole walk, taken gently, should take about two hours. 7LJ1JOLl8�·zeJ 0:[]��2 ----------- A HACKNEY SOCIETY PUBLICATION c=J____, � � � CETT �I with DALSTON CITY PARTNERSHIP □���-•",I gardens on the lines of Vauxhall-the firstPimlico was all kinds. But for furniture-makingShoreditch was a here; or, from providing occasional entertainment, world centre by the nineteenth century and a major expanded into full-blown theatres like the famous employer in Hoxton. Britannia (22). You will be walking through an area which has The theatre tradition was much older. Queen Eliza­ always been used by Londoners foractivities they had beth had ordained a "green belt", thus encouraging no room for, or did not wish to see too much of, or did theatres immediately outside the walls, when such not allow, within their walls; you may find it interesting activities were banned within them. In 1576 James to wonder to what extent this is still so, and whether the Burbage set up The Theatre (5) near the ruins of the walls are still there ... Priory of Holywell-see the plaque at 86 Curtain Road. The walk starts at the front of the church. There Here Shakespeare acted in the Lord Chamberlain's was a medirevalchurch in Shoreditch, but it was in a Company, and forjust twenty years Shoreditch was the dire state in 1711 when the parishioners petitioned to be venue for the firstEnglish theatres-Burbage's was allowed to have one of the fifty Commissioners' joined by The Curtain in 1577. Ben Johnson played churches which were being built underthe 1718 Act. In there; he also killed a man in a duel up in the fieldsof the end they succeeded: in 1736 the new St Leonard' s Hoxton, escaping, as a cleric could, with a branding. (1) rose to the design of George Dance the Elder, The medirevalreligious foundations had been closed architect of the Mansion House. The Clerk's House down and sold off by Henry VIII, but the tradition of looks like a relic frommuch earlier, but was put up deathbed charity by well-lined city merchants lived on only a year before the church. in the endowment of almshouses-a remarkable Look out across the High Street to a row of Victo­ Chassereau' s Survey 1745 number of them tucked away in Hoxton a hundred rian commercial buildings, each performing over the As you walk round you will not just be looking at years later; two of the buildings survive ( 14, 25). traffic. NQs 125-130 (2) are still recognisably a grand selected buildings, but beginning to feel the atmosphere The trade in lunacy was generally less philanthropic: ensemble, built as showrooms for Wells & Co's iron of this area. So, before you set out, a word about Hox­ Hoxton had by 1800 a large number of paying, or paid works, railings, gutters, cooking ranges and the like. ton 's relationship to the City, which has largely deter­ for, mental patients. On the new Community College Behind these buildings is the viaduct carrying the North mined the forms of its settlement and use. Areas like site was the largest of these, Hoxton House (21). London Railway; it survived as the Richmond-Broad Spitalfields,Clerkenwell and Shoreditch are too near to The most frequentneed of the citizens of London in Street Line until Broadgate swamped its terminus. The the walls ever to have been truly independent; but being 1745, as now, would have been for small service East London Line extension to Dalston may one day outside them they were not merely to be absorbed. enterprises: market gardens, stables and workshops of use the tracks again, as well as Shoreditch Station As late as 1745, Chassereau's survey shows that above Old Street. little of the land you will be walking was developed: You will soon be heading over-this road, but tum the Roman roads on each side of the crossing were built left for a moment. Walk through the churchyard, where up; houses were strung along Hoxton Street and Old the Portland Stone gives way to brick on the south Street, frontingthe newish developments of Hoxton elevation, to Calvert Avenue. Here is the boundary with and <;:harlesSquares (8,13) and the Aske Almshouses Bethnal Green, with ArnoldCircus and the striped (14) gleamed in open land. But right into the 1800s brickwork of the Boundary Estate (3); in the 1890s the most of the parish north of Old Street was open. LCC pulled down "the Old Nichol", Arthur Morrison's Shoreditch had always been well colqnised by the "Jago", and one of the worst "rookeries" of the East City of London. If walls were a barrier to the City's End, to make way for this new development of five spread, places just outside could provide the contrast of storey flats. Its references to earlier philanthropic semi-countryside. So Hoxton was famous in the Middle models, like Enfield Buildings (19), are clear, but this Ages for a wide system of managed archery ranges. was one of the earliest and best of purely municipal Later, inns responded to the demand for pleasure 1 St Leonard' s Church, Shoreditch in 1820 housing schemes. Return now across the High Street and move under the City "are most famous, and frequented by scholars But these late Victorian Gothic buildings do not tell the the railway into Rivington Street. On the right a wide and youths of the city in summer evenings, when they earlier story of Hoxton as a centre for dissenting yard shows the back of the stage set which Shoreditch walk forthto take the air". The waters of St Agnes the preachers and wider radicalism. William Godwin, Town Hall (4) presents to Old Street. For two blocks Clear were tapped for ale-brewing, but by the 1730s philosopher of radicalism, studied at the Hoxton Acad­ Rivington Street maintains the scale of its Victorian you could take the waters for all manner of complaints. emy in the 1770s. As so often in the history of Hoxton, mix-small workshops and showrooms with flats At Charlotte Road look south down a canyon of it became a haven for those not quite welcome in the over-and two good pubs, The Barley Mow and the Victorian showrooms with their stockrooms and cranes City itself. Bricklayers Arms. Several have been decently repaired above. But as you tum towards Hoxton you will be On the East side the original 1680s frontage of NQ during the 1980s boom; one, NQ 54, refaced with great heading for a quieter world across Old Street. This 32 has been carefully restored (10); most of the houses verve, now sinks back as the white rendering weathers. Roman road now roars with traffic on a one-way Red firsterected would have had this patternof frontage, Look left down Curtain Road. Here the lofty show­ Route, and it is visibly crumbling. The north side has height and vocabulary. rooms of the furniture trade went up, particularly after been famous for the rival ironmongers Parry and Coronet Street leaves the South end of the Square, Great EasternStreet was driven through in the 1870s. Tyzack, who still exist, huddled into a shop opposite passing tall workshops and the Bass-ClefJazz Club, to Burbage's Theatre (5) was just north of New Inn Yard, Curtain Road. Hoxton Market (11). This small Square is to be the first with The Curtain probably in Hewett Street. Now cross into Hoxton proper and its Square (8), of two courts of Westminster University's new student At the bend in Rivington Street you will have seen a laid out in 1684 in conscious imitation of West End housing. On its East side stands the Hoxton Market tall arch in the brickwork-the Tramshed (6); which it developments. With Charles Square (13) and the Christian Mission, founded by Lewis Burtt in 1881 to never was, but an electrical substation to power the Market (11), it was an attempt, just twenty years after help a notoriously run-down area. On the North side of trams, designed by Vincent Harris for the LCC in 1907; the Great Fire, to kick-start the colonisation of Hoxton the Square is a wide red brick arch-"From dust, light there is a similar one in Upper Street; Islington.