zstory• libraries urt1ers In this issue - • Hackney parsonage house, and the Tudor courtiers who lived there • A 'Who's Who' ofdissenting clergy in the reign of Charles II • Victorian chrysanthemum enthusiasts in Stoke Newington • Finsbury Park's first voluntary library • Hackney's first Labour council Hackney History is the annual volume of the Friends ofHackney Archives. The Friends were founded in 1985 to act as a focus for local history in Hackney, and to support the work ofHackney Archives Department. As well as the annual volume they receive the Department's regular newsletter, The Hackney Terrier. Hackney History is issued free ofcharge to subscribers to the Friends. Membership is £8 for the calendar year. For further information telephone 01712412886, fax 01712416688, e-mail [email protected]. ISSN 1360 3795 £4.00 free to subscribers HACKNEY H£story volume jive Abbreviations used 2 'Naboth' s Vineyard': Hackney rectory in the 17th century Martin Tcrylor 3 Restoration Hackney, haven for the ejected Philip W Plumb 12 Stoke Newington and 'the golden flower' Anne Wilkinson 22 Culture comes to Finsbury Park: the public library movement in South Homsey, 1890-1900 Riry Hidson 30 Labour in power: Hackney Borough Council 1919-1922 Barry Burke 35 Postscript: the symbolism of the Rebello token Robert H. Thompson 46 Contributors to this issue 47 Acknowledgements 47 About this publication 48 THE FRIENDS OF HACKNEY ARCHIVES 1999 Published by the Friends of Hackney Archives Hackney Archives Department 'NABOTH'S VINEYARD': 43 de Beauvoir Road Nl 5SQ HACKNEY RECTORY IN THE 17TH For further details see page 48 CENTURY Edited by Isobel Watson Cover design by Jacqueline Bradshaw-Price Printed by Sackville Printers, Heddon St Wl Martin Taylor ISSN 1360 3 795 © Friends of Hackney Archives and contributors, 1999 Introduction recover the rectory. These are John's 'Danyells In late May 1601, officers of the Court of Dysasters', and Jane's 'The Misfortunes of Jane Star Chamber at Westminster arrived in Hack­ Danyell'.1 They offer a marvellous insight into ney with warrants for the arrest of the tenant their characters, as well as casting light on of the rectory. He was a country gentleman their way of life in Hackney. There are two from Cheshire and would-be courtier, in his inventories of the Rectory - or Parsonage - fifties, called John Daniell. He had moved to house itself: one of the house prepared for the Hackney less than a year previously with his Exchequer Commission, and a second of the wife Jane, a Protestant exile from the Low gatehouse prepared by Jane Daniell herself. A Countries, and their children. He was accused third inventory lists agricultural produce and of blackmailing £ l, 720 from the Countess of tools ('certayne necessaries for husbandrie') Essex, by threatening to reveal to the authori­ in the outbuildings of the Parsonage. 2 These ties the contents of letters to her from her records give a unique picture of one of Hack­ husband the Earl. She had deposited these ney's 'lost' houses of the Elizabethan period ABBREVIATIONS letters for safe keeping with Jane Daniell, during which a number of aristocrats, courtiers whom she had formerly employed as her gen­ and office holders made residence in Hack­ HAD Hackney Archives Department tlewoman. The Earl of Essex, Elizabeth I's dis­ ney fashionable. This article seeks to inter­ DNB Dictionary ofNational Biography graced favourite, had been John's patron but pret this evidence of the way of life of such LMA London Metropolitan Archives the relationship had not produced the mate­ people, and to give an impression of one of PRO Public Record Office rial rewards he had expected. This was the their houses. motive for the crime. John was found guilty, All publications cited are published in London imprisoned, and fined £3,000. In part payment Rectors, patrons andfarmers unless otherwise indicated. of the fine, Hackney rectory was seized by The rectory of Hackney - that property Commissioners of the Exchequer and eventu­ which pertained to the rector - included the ally sold to the Heybourne family of Parsonage house and the glebe land surround­ Tottenham. ing it. In 1622 there were about five acres of Unusually, John and Jane Daniell left manu­ glebe, lying to the west of the house,3 and in script autobiographies which told their side 1650 this land was farmed as pasture.4 By 1650 of the story, and described their attempts to two tenements, or houses, had been built on 3 HACKNEY History 'Naboth's Vineyard' 6 the glebe. All this property lay on the west the hearth tax return of 1664 or that of 1671 and gardens formerly leased to John Rawlinson the Assembly Rooms, had been erected on side of Church Street ( as the northern part of list the then farmers as being resident in and the capital messuage with yard and gar­ the line of Sweet Bryer Walk, which had dis­ Mare Street was called until 1868) and north Church Street. After passing through a number dens 'now in the possession of --Wood'.8 appeared. The Assembly Rooms were used for of the confluence of Hackney and Pigwell of hands, the farm of the rectory, together with This is clearly the Parsonage house, and a plan a wide variety of functions - 'subscription Brooks. the manor of Lordshold with which it became appended to the lease enables us to identify balls ... public meetings .. .in science, religion, or As well as the glebe, the rectory also in­ associated, passed in 1697 to Francis Tyssen the property exactly. politics' .10 The land, which already appears cluded the tithes of the arable produce of the the elder. The Parsonage house is a good sized build­ from the 1766 plan to have undergone some parish, and_ an estate, the manor of A flurry of quitclaims extinguishing the ing, standing detached 50 yards or so behind formal planting, perhaps by John Rawlinson, 5 Grumbolds. This was a compact property run­ rights of numerous former patrons and farm­ the west side of Church Street at the end of tenant of the grounds of the Parsonage in the ning along both sides of Church Street. ers followed Tyssen's acquisition. It is some an alley way marked as Sweet Bryer Walk. early 18th century, was laid out as pleasure Copyholds of the manor included the Black consolation to the modern reader trying to We know from the evidence ofJane Daniell's gardens and a trap ball ground, according to a and White House to the south of the church, master the legal complexities of the transfers inventory that at one time the Parsonage had further plan of the Mermaid premises of 1810.11 and its grounds in Church Field; house prop­ of the rectory leases that the residents of Hack­ a gatehouse. Presumably this lay at one end The 1810 plan also suggests that the Par­ erty in Church Street; and at least part of ney at the time were equally perplexed. In or the other of this passage. The two acres or sonage house survived until that date. Cer­ Dame Sairey's Croft, a field at the top of the October 1659 the churchwardens gave notice so of land leased to Brunn were presumably tainly a building of much the same size and street, on the north side of Dalston Lane and to Richard Blackwell 'or whom it does con­ the vestiges the of the five acres of pasture position as in 1766 appears. It is described as cern to take care for the repayres of the Lower Clapton Road. which surrounded the house in 1650. 'cottages'; presumably it had been divided up, chancell'.7 Blackwell had been farmer of the In 1535 the rectory as a whole was worth Brunn's motive for leasing the Parsonage and perhaps to accommodate staff of the Mermaid. the sizeable sum of £26 per annum. It was rectory in the early 1650s, but appears to have its grounds was to expand the facilities of the If this hypothesis is correct (and it must be estimated in 1650 (after a long period of in­ relinquished his interest as early as 1654. Who Mermaid. A plan attached to the renewal of admitted that in 1790 a fire did 'considerable flation) that it could be let for £140 a year. It should assume the responsibility of the rector 9 the lease in 1 777 shows that a large block, damage' to the outbuildings of the Mermaid), was therefore a worthwhile piece of prefer­ seems to have been a contentious issue in the a watercolour of Captain Sadler's balloon as­ ment, and had the added attraction of being parish. cent from the Mermaid gardens in 1811 may a sinecure, with no pastoral responsibilities R / ;.,.,,,.,,{ A,,,..,,.., C , ;., ,,, ,,{ ,✓, ;.,,. u · ,, )' , /~, ;:/,,..', be the only surviving illustration of the Par­ other than the repair of the chancel of the Where was the Parsonage house? 12 D .(·.·, t,~·}1 i: ,t /1, '"•'• sonage house. The view is over Buck Horse church. Cure of souls in Hackney parish was Although the early 17th century is the pe­ ~. E . .... .., ✓, : .,, , , , l / /,::'l ll lt or House Lane, later Cold Bath Lane ( and the responsibility of the vicar, although his riod for which we have most information about + + + + now Kenmure Road) to the wall of the gar­ living was worth a third of the value of the the Parsonage house, its location is only iden­ ++ , /,,,1, ,;/.(p-u,ll1.',, r,,/;,,~,,,,, ,;/ (! .., { ;,A.. ,, dens. The high roofed building above which rectory in 1650. tifiable from 18th century evidence. The ~ _, ....alcii$Td - I f . ~, I the church tower emerges is the Assembly As most rectors were absentees it became records of the land tax in 172 7 note that ~·( • ~ Rooms.