LEABRIDGE Foot and horse traffic crossed the Lea to Hackney, by Lockbridge and the adjoining ford to Clapton, and by Temple Mills to Homerton and Hackney Wick. Lockbridge is mentioned in 1486–7. It was reported in 1551 that it was broken down, and that Lord Wentworth, lord of the manor of Hackney, ought to repair it sufficiently for foot traffic. It was listed by Norden in 1594 among the most useful bridges in Middlesex, but collapsed finally between 1612 and 1630, and was replaced by the ferry later known as Hackney or Jeremy's ferry. The ford was

If you have a look through the historic map on layers of London you will find that Shoreditch Park is quite a recent arrival in East London. Looking at the OS Maps from the late 19th century you can see that this area was densely populated with terraced housing on streets like Clift Street and Salisbury Street that are no longer there. The next OS Maps we have from the mid 20th century show a dramatically altered landscape with many of the terraces gone and replaced with new kinds of houses. What happened? The answer can be found in the London City

Port Victoria station was located on a wooden pier in the River Medway Estuary. When the pier was declared unsafe in 1931 the station was closed and shortly afterwards demolished. A new temporary wooden platform was built close to the landward side of the pier. This was later replaced by a concrete platform; there was also a new brick signalbox. The station was finally closed in 1951 when an expansion of the oil refinery required the land. All evidence of the station was swept away but at low tide it is still possible to see some of the piles from

UK hit by cement shortages cemnet.com/News/story/170… building suppliers are imposing allocations on all its customers, limiting orders to 30 bags per day for trade customers and five bags per day for retail. and "Prices are increasing across multiple product groups and some of the increases are sudden and very sharp."

The Standard National Theatre in Shoreditch High Street Information taken from ‘snapshots from the Standard: theatre in 1870s Shoreditch’, Sally England, Hackney History 12, pp 23-34
This article concerns the Standard - the largest theatre in London - which once stood on the site opposite the former Bishopsgate Goods Yard in Shoreditch High Street, home now to a sauna and a wine warehouse. Originally known as the National Standard, the theatre was built in 1837 with an audience capacity of 3,400. Its heyday came under the management of the Douglass

Looking back from the 1860s, the lawyer John Hodgkin remembered that through his childhood up to 1814 'Everything north of Penton Street Clerkenwell was true country, with dairy farms and a few single houses or cottages between it and the fine horizon line'. At the same remove, Pinks pictured early Penton Street as 'a kind of northern Belgravia'. If that was exaggerated, it confirms memory of the street's lost charms and amenities. While the White Conduit House stood at the north end, the south was flanked by Dobney's tea gardens and bowling greens,

From prehistoric to urban Shoreditch: excavations at "Museum of London Archaeology carried out archaeological excavations at Holywell Priory, Holywell Lane, Shoreditch EC2, in the London Borough of Hackney, between August 2006 and November 2007. The excavations were conducted on behalf of Transport for London and were undertaken as part of the construction of a new urban railway, the East London Line Project (ELLP), Northern Railway Extension. The presence on site of the medieval Holywell Priory and the Earls of Rutland’s Tudor mansion was known before

Swan Tavern, 13 Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch E1 The very early address for this is in Swan Yard in the directories as is the 1848 license transfer, All the other early license transfers up until 1873 refer to the address as Swan Street, Shoreditch; and these match the early Swan Yard directory references.
There are also Swan, Swan street in both Bethnal Green and Whitechapel! And to confuse matters even more, the directories which refer to Swan street, Shoreditch actually refer to the Bethnal Green Swan.
In the 1871 census, the address is at

In June 1897 the borough of Shoreditch opened a groundbreaking facility for burning waste to generate electricity. Before this development, the Regents Canal, opened in 1820, brought coal into the borough and coal gas was manufactured along its banks. The canal also carried away industrial and household refuse which was taken by barge and dumped at sea.
The first practical electric light had been made in Paris in 1876. By 1878 the Wells and Company Ironworks at 125-130 Shoreditch High Street were already generating their own electricity to light their

Did you know that hackney Council has pension fund investments in companies connected with defence companies active in Israel. Resident Sussan Rassouli asked a question about Hackney’s pension committee and investments in firms like Raytheon, Elbit and Caterpillar, which are suppliers in Israel.

Cholera in Silk Mill Row, Hackney
Information taken from Cholera and public health in 19th century Hackney, Dick Hunter, Hackney History 13, pp 24-33
During the first half of the C19 it became clear that the health of Londoners was under serious threat. While it was not yet understood that cholera was spread by dirty water, there was increasing alarm at the four cholera epidemics that took so many lives. The Thames received most of the capital’s sewage and also provided much of its water supply. The stink of the river alone was sufficient to provoke

Match girls come out very strong on a Saturday night, when any number of them may be found at the Paragon Music Hall, in the Mile End Road; the Foresters’ Music Hall, in Cambridge Road; and the Sebright, at Hackney; The Eagle, in the City Road, used to be a favourite resort of these girls, and in bygone summers dancing on the crystal platform was their nightly amusement. They continue to be very fond of dancing, but they are even more attached to singing. They seem to know by heart the words of all the popular music hall songs of the day, and their

River Lea history - In the Roman era, Old Ford, as the name suggests, was the ancient, most downstream, crossing point of the River Lea. This was part of a pre-Roman route that followed the modern Oxford Street, Old Street, through Bethnal Green to Old Ford and thence across a causeway through the marshes, known as Wanstead Slip (now in Leyton). The route then continued through Essex to Colchester. At this time, the Lea was a wide, fast flowing river, and the tidal estuary stretched as far as Hackney Wick. Evidence of a late Roman settlement at

BUCCLEUCH TERRACE. .Upper Clapton. c1900 Georgian terrace demolished 1950s Buccleuch Terrace Gardens

1880 Mare Street, looking north from near Hackney Tower; showing Manor Rooms. Mare Street was a distinct settlement in 1593. By that date it may have included the Flying Horse Inn, said to have been a staging post, the Nag's Head and the Horse and Groom, since all three were timber-built. In 1695 Mare Street had 23 residents. By 1720, Mare Street was the most populous district of the parish, with 111 ratepayers, and contained 6 of the 36 select vestrymen in 1729. Tramways were built in 1873. After the First World War the area became more industrial.

Hackneys best known gardens, behind the Mermaid Inn on the west side of Church Street, corner of Brett & Kenmure included upper and lower bowling greens, presumably where Dudley Ryder in 1716 was amused by the earnestness of the players, and a trap ball ground in 1810. They extended in 1766 beyond Hackney brook to a lime walk and in 1831 to a larger kitchen garden one green was used for archery in 1842. They witnessed successful balloon trips, notably by James Sadler in 1811, when the number of sightseers 'exceeded calculation', and by Mrs. Graham

Hackney featured highly in Renton Nicholson’s Cockney Adventures and Tales of London Life. “In the early-to-mid-19th century, water colourists were busy depicting a world that was disappearing or which had recently disappeared. At much the same time, positioned between the pastoral and the urban, is Renton Nicholson's Cockney Adventures and Tales of London Life (from 1837), first issued in serial form, much at the same time a Dickens' Sketches by Boz (which itself describes a visit to the Eagle tavern). “For the most part the Adventures relate,

Manor Gardens Allotments: a Scandalous Legacy The scandalous treatment of the Manor Gardens Allotment Society continues. In the autumn of 2007 the allotments were forcibly, but supposedly temporarily, removed to Marsh Lane Fields in Leyton, now ridiculously renamed Jubilee Park. The original planning permission was granted by Waltham Forest on the strict condition that this was to be a temporary relocation and the allotments were to return to the Olympic Park, although not to their original site, now part of the 'Not the largest new urban park in Europe

Manor Garden Allotments were allotment gardens occupying 4.5 acres (18,000 m2) between the River Lea and the Channelsea River in Hackney Wick, London, England. They are also sometimes referred to as Eastway Allotments, particularly in the 2012 Summer Olympics planning application documents. They were demolished to make way for the Olympic site. The site was formerly in the London Borough of Hackney, but after ward boundary changes in the 1990s the footprint sat within London Borough of Newham. At the time of eviction the site was owned by Lee Valley

Brief history of Temple Mills on Hackney Marsh by the River Lea, on the then West Ham boundary, originated before 1185 in a grant made to the Knights Templars by William of Hastings, steward to Henry II, of a tract of meadow and marsh on or near the river Lea; this was later identified as lying in Hackney Middlesex and included some meadow in St. Mary Hope in Leyton. In 1185 the Templars seem to have had no mill in Leyton or Hackney, but by 1278 they had a water-mill in Leyton. In 1308 this mill, held of the king and valued at £1 6s. 8d., adjoined

The last wall of Newgate prison is being demolished, allowing St Paul's to emerge in the background. This was the end of the last prison in the City of London. A prison had stood on this spot since at least the 12th century. Hangings, which had previously been held in public at Tyburn, still took place within its walls after 1868. In the 18th century it was the largest and most notorious of London's 150 prisons. When Newgate was demolished, the gallows and the male inmates were moved to Pentonville Prison, and the women to Holloway. Until that point,