DOWN QUEENSBRIDGE ROAD WALK (1.1 miles)

The walk takes you down the west side of Queensbridge Road. It is complemented by another route which takes you up the east side of the road.

1/12 Start at The Victoria, E8 3AS, a pub since the 1850s. This is the only building surviving of the original c19th development on this side of the road. Originally this was called Queen’s Rd, renamed 1938.

2/12 Carry on the same side of the road past the Rhodes Estate. Named for the Rhodes family who built up their 140-acre Lamb Farm estate stretching from Dalston Junction to London Fields between 1807 and 1870s. The original houses were compulsorily purchased in the 1970s for building of the Estate.

3/12 At the corner with Forest Road stood the Prince Albert pub, built 1839 and closed 1981. Here in 1847 you could buy tickets for the omnibus commute down Queen’s Road on its way from Clapton to London. The Rhodes family gave a woodland theme to the names of streets they laid out on their land.

4/12 Cross Richmond Road to pass the Holly Street estate. Original houses put up on Rhodes land were compulsory purchased, demolished and the Holly Street Estate built 1971 with 4 tower blocks. This was sometime home to Idris Elba and Sid Vicious among others. The estate was redeveloped in 2001; 3 tower blocks were blown up saving one for refurbishment.

5/12 To Middleton Road. Queen’s Road was laid out in 1839 to open up the fields for development as housing. Middleton Road forms the boundary between Middleton family land to the south and land owned to the north by the Rhodes family. On the southern corner was from 1847 the Middleton Arms pub, demolished in 2002.

6/12 Pass Queensbridge School opened in 1898 for 1243 children. Notice on the wall of Albion Drive the boundary marker between the parishes, later metropolitan boroughs, of Shoreditch, to the south, and Hackney, to the north.

7/12 Further on see the entrance to the Acton Estate. Land here in this part of Shoreditch, which was called Haggerston, was bought in 1598 by Sir Robert Lee. The land was inherited by the Acton then Middleton families. Local streets were named for members of the family or other places owned by the family.

8/12 Walk on passing blocks of social housing put up in the 1960s by Shoreditch council replacing houses compulsorily purchased to re-house people moved from other sites demolished by Shoreditch council. Notice just up Scriven Street Stick’s 14m mural on Livermore Court.

9/12 Pass the sign of the Belgrave Arms, a pub here from 1839 to 2010. Cross the canal and Whiston Road to The Acorn, a pub since 1827. The area’s last vestige of early c19th development The Acorn is to be demolished as ‘incongruous with post-war pattern of development’. Further down Whiston Rd notice Haggerston Baths, with ship weather-vane, opened in 1904 and closed in 2001. It is to be developed as a multi-use work/retail hub.

10/12 Pass St Mary’s Estate named for the 1827 John Nash church destroyed in the blitz in 1941. The church was built when the ancient parish of St Leonard’s Shoreditch was divided. St Mary’s was built to serve the growing population of west Shoreditch. A model of the church, made by a Shoreditch councillor, is exhibited in Hackney Museum.

11/12 Further down the road, Set back from the street is Grade II listed Haggerston school. Built in 1963, it was the work of leading Modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger; his only secondary school for the London County Council. Originally for girls only, the school went co-ed in 2010.

12/12 End this walk at Hackney Road which was the boundary between the parishes of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green and from 1965 between the London Boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. From 1738 the road was part of a toll road from Stamford Hill to Shoreditch via Clapton and Mare Street, with toll gates at the junction with Cambridge Heath Road and by St Leonard’s Shoreditch.

Sean Gubbins Walkhackney.co.uk May 2020