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Home , Britannia Theatre, Hackney (parish), Hoxton, Hoxton Square, John Stow, Kingsland Road

SHOREDl11, & HOX

HACKNEY 24 Haxton Garden WALKS NQ4 23 Haxton Hall 25 GeffryeAlmshouses

_§Op------18 StJohn'sChurch 22 site

19 EnfieldBuildings 21 Haxton House St John's Church 16 The Varieties

14 Aske Almshouses I is an ancient and was 15 PitfieldStreet Library 14- i�==- 1' a 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 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 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 SOCIETY PUBLICATION c=J____, � � � CETT �I with CITY PARTNERSHIP □���-•",I gardens on the lines of -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 '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 , and Shoreditch are too near to The most frequentneed of the citizens of London in Street Line until swamped its terminus. The the walls ever to have been truly independent; but being 1745, as now, would have been for small service 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 . 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 , with ArnoldCircus and the striped (14) gleamed in open land. But right into the 1800s brickwork of the (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 . 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 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 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; . fields with elegant squares and terraces. It never quite and power" in Latin in the panel above. This was the took off, but in you can still feel the ordered peace of terraces of houses round a garden. Walk round it clockwise. On the site of NQ 1 lived the doctor who gave his name to Parkinson's Disease; in 1800 he was medical officerfor a private lunatic asylum in Hoxton. Much of this side has gone, includ­ ing St Peter's Church (Anglican), whose Vicarage remains at NQ 10. NQs 8 and 9 are tum-of-the-century furniture workshops with whole frontages opened up to the square. 12 The Generating Station--roofscape 6 The Tramshed, Rivington Street St Monica's (Catholic) dominates the north side (9), rising between its convent and the National Schools. "Shoreditch Vestry RefuseDestructor and Steam Across the street from the Tramshed, cliffsof stock Generating Station" 1897, a model for our times, brickwork and sash windows signal the 1980s. In the jpff :-.���=?I;;�-:'.' -,' ,' " . ' generating power (250 kW) fromlocal waste and middle the New Tabernacle CongregationalChapel (7) �-(!_:· Lit ,iii I feeding it widely to Vestry property, including the new has also become offices-itis best seen fromChapel Baths, which used to stand next to PitfieldStreet

··- Place off Old Street. Below it is one of the natural ,,�i;,· j Library (15). Behind rises the Generating Hall (12), ,.,,':.w:/ '��- ��@: springs which grew into a spa. This was fenland until �-- three stories high and the next home of Circus Space. the fifteenth century (hence Moor-fields),when the �,;.m Cross PitfieldStreet into Charles Square (13)-the marsh was drained. In 1598 described third element in the 1680s layout. The green-centred •·•. :•�, [U�� I �� •· - /-- "somewhat north from Holywell is one other well '"':.-�"' •o•;,u r l �d1 .-=,.E' 1 l square itself has survived post-war redevel?pment . l • \'., , i. � .:s • � � I t : Q curbed square with stone and is called Daine Annis the --- l Ff'.ttill@ . =n'n--, along with a finetown house at N 16, the old Magis­ clear" and he described how the wells to the north of 13, 11 and 8 The Three Squares in 1872 trates Court and Registry Office. From the comer Borough and English Heritage. Turn down Fanshawe Street now, towards Boxton Street. On the right, behind Academy Buildings, rises . Enfield Buildings (19), tenements from the charity housing movement of the 1870s. You have now reached Boxton Street (20). Boxton features in , probably as a group of houses along this path out of the City (although concen­ 14 Haberdasher's School and Almshouse 1890 trated until the 18th century further north, where the nearest the tower block look back over roofs to the road widens at St Leonard's Hospital). At this point stonework of the Town Hall (4) with St Leonard's (1) you face a range of tall red brick buildings behind a behind it. There is a path from the top of the square to wall. This site has never been part of the northward 24 Haxton Community Garden Chart Street and the side of the most grand of Boxton's spread of housing, because· it was a Jewish burial down from 's Eastern Hospital and public institutions___:_the Haberdasher's Company School and ground when Boxton Square was laid out. Just North of lavatories designed for an oil rig. F Cooke's Eel and Pie Almshouses (14). This is the second building, of 1827; the Square Sir Jonathan Miles owned a lunatic Asylum, Shop is at NQ 150 and the Queen's Head overlooks the the first was designed in the 1690s by Dr Robert which he moved next to the cemetery in 1784. Thirty garden-maybe time for a rest, before cutting through Hooke, a learned friend of Sir Christopher Wren, using years later there were nearly 500 patients at Boxton Stanway Street and Hare Walk to Kingsland Road. Q 's £24,000 legacy. Further on you will see House, in horribly crowded conditions; N 34 may even As you emerge the GeffryeMuseum (25) welcomes the extraordinary unity of Haberdasher Street (17), have been part of it (21). After 1889 the new LCC took you, sitting well back below trees and a enormous terraces of flatswith roof railings. it over and erected the Board School, with later addi­ pediment-almshouses again, built for the Ironmongers The main Aske Building lost its Almshouse wings tions in the 1960s. The whole of this site is now being Company in 1715 and once flankedby others. Since in 1873, but the School remained, now City and East replanned as Hackney College, one of the largest 1910 it has been a famous museum of furniture and of London College. Across its gardens the Doric portico educational developments in the country. the way the English furnish their homes. faces the most exuberant of Hoxton's buildings, Pitfield You may want to cut short or postpone your walk Turn right now, past Goddard and Gibbs' glass shop Street Library (15), designed with its baths by the 1895 here, turning right to Old Street Police Station and the under the railway bridge. On the left is the entrance to competition winner Henry Hare. The Vestry were keen Town Hall (4); otherwise turnleft into the real market, Perseverance Works (26). Only at the very end of to get the Baths right: so Hare did the elevations while along Boxton Street. Its pubs are still lively and musi­ Kingsland Road do you get to see how to returnto the Spalding and Cross, public baths experts, sorted out the cal, but a hundred years ago it was the Britannia Thea­ n delicate, tiered spire of St Leonard's, over the Roman plas. The baths were demolished in 1962, but from tre which packed them in and Sara Lane, the "Queen of crossroads, with very great care, by the traffic lights. Bowling Green Lane you can see the extent of the Boxton", presided. The "Old Brit" started as a pub Vestry's development-library, baths and power under Sara's husband Sam, but was rebuilt in 1857 as a © 1994 The Hackney Society station. Before turning left up Pitfield Street, just pause grand and gilded theatre, blitzed in 1940 (22). Boxton The Society is a local association affiliatedto the Civic to look right at NQ 47-49 on the corner of Chart Street, Hall (23) is still there, a well-loved community centre Trust; forfurther informationcontact The Hackney Society, the motifs of a 1930s Odeon deployed in a two- bay with a unique galleried theatre. It was built in 1863 as a corner infill block just b€fore the war. Music Hall (see the keystone in Wilks Place), but from With thanks to London Borough of Hackney Conservation Now Pitfield Street widens out, with a pre-war estate 1879 it was strictly Temperance, run first by the Blue Group and Archives Section and the Hoxton Trust for permission to use old plans and drawings. of fine red brick flats on your right and opposite them Ribbon Army and then by the Quakers. Text and drawings by Cazenove Architects Cooperative the dtlapidated facade of George Harwood's 1870 Boxton Street still has se.veral 18th century houses, Music Hall, The Varieties (16). Past the George and often under layers of facing and standing well back Typeset by Clive Akerman Vulture stands another of the Commissioners' from later shop fronts. NQs 124-6 are now derelict, but Q �� churches, St (18), designed by Francis N s 173-175 have been restored as houses, with tiled Printed by KKS Printing Edwards in 1823. Its Apocalyptic internal ceiling front gardens. Next to NQ 156 the Boxton Trust has paintings have been restored with assistance from the made a beautiful garden (24), with a Cupola brought Funded by Dalston City Partnership. IMPORTANT NOTE - THIS ELECTRONIC EDITION is a produced from a scan of the original publication and is provided for historical, personal and educational use only. A substantial amount of time has elapsed since publication and some information in this walk may no longer be valid or sensible. No warranty is provided nor can any responsibility be taken for any reliance upon it. For further information or to purchase an original copy email [email protected]