LONDON A-Z
S is for Shacklewell
My alphabetical quest has finally reached zone 2, because unsung suburbs exist even in inner London. Shacklewell was one of the four hamlets of the ancient parish of Hackney, the others being the better-known Dalston, Kingsland and Newington. For centuries it comprised a quiet linear village along a country lane bearing off the Great Cambridge Road. But housing growth in Victorian times caused everything to merge, and while the names of settlements along the main roads survived poor old Shacklewell mostly lost its identity. It does have a station, near enough, but when they named that Rectory Road in 1872 the battle was mostly lost. I intend to walk the half-mile of Shacklewell Lane to see what's still here and what's new, starting by the Dalston branch of Nando's.
It's not the most uplifting of starts, passing a plant hire yard and a corner shop which claims to be 'the best supermarket in town', in which case London's retail economy must be in freefall. But then comes the most overbearing building on the street, a large redbrick pile which opened as Stoke Newington Synagogue in 1903 but which for the last 50 years has been Shacklewell Lane Mosque, hence the mighty dome plonked on top. On opening it was Britain's first mosque for the Turkish-Cypriot community, this part of Hackney proving a key migrant magnet. Judging by the banners on the gate their current commercial preoccupation is providing appropriate forms of burial "at Shacklewell Lane Mosque or another mosque of your choice", also flogging the products of importers Coffins Direct.
Several of the older industrial buildings along this first stretch have become service industry portals or creative studios, i.e. very New Hackney. 'The Factory' for example is home to Mystique Piercing, a purveyor of vegan scented candles and a bespoke milliner called Woody & Blue Hats. At number 32 are Kemp London, the city's oldest signmaking company who now specialise in all things neon, their clients including Disney, Tiffany, M&M's and Blur. Then it's right back down to earth at number 38 with Jack's Cafe, because there are still classic caffs with plastic tablecloths, squeezy sauce bottles and old gents in football tops putting the world to rights over a Full English. Shacklewell Lane's streetcred never quite recovers.
Follow the bend to the left past the street's finest housing stock which is Foskett Terrace, a long curve of three-storey villas with the Victorian authenticity estate agents dream of. Residents have a very-Hackney choice of educational establishments nearby, starting nextdoor with a nursery school inside the former Public Washing Baths, naturally called Bath House. For primary education they can cross the road to Halley House, opened ten years ago when there was a penchant for founding academies in any old office block. The local secondary option used to be Kingsland, a school deemed failing in 2003 and replaced by a boxier blue campus named after founder Jack Petchey, which now covers most of the south side of the old village.
Here comes the best bit, starting with the village's old pub first recorded as The Green Man in 1760. It's now the Shacklewell Arms, the name written only in faint white paint on the fascia and daubed in small text across the windows. I wondered if it had closed but no, that's just its style, with bands appearing this week including Bag of Cans, Frog and Blousey. The row of shops beyond is much depleted, including a 'newsagent' that no longer sells newspapers and a very lowly hairdressers, but also an organic greengrocer and a super-gentrified yoga retreat. Most of the old parade has been turned into small houses, two of the owners choosing to retain the old signage - specifically butchers JR Brewer at 77 and Eliiot's Dairies at 109. Strangely nowhere here does hot drinks, given Shacklewell had a coffee house as early as 1785.
The most obvious survivor is the village green, now a long thin fenced area bounded by plane trees. These days Shacklewell Green doubles up as a traffic island, the 488 bus passing either side depending, and the only greenspace locally for canine exercise if you don't want to schlep over to Hackney Downs. At its heart is a crucifix-topped war memorial dedicated to 'the men of Shacklewell who made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War', so the area must still have had its own community identity back then. Any vestiges of a rural idyll can however be swept away by looking at the Cotton Lofts across the road, modern flats crammed into a 1930s printworks owned by Henry Hildesley, the company that produced London Transport's postwar posters. The modern flats behind replaced a paper bag factory and a tennis string factory respectively.
The jewel of the Shacklewell Green conservation area is the enclave of workers cottages behind, eliciting a slight gasp when you enter for the first time. These elegant redbrick terraces have recessed porches, Welsh slate roofs and mostly the original sash windows. The finest features are the terracotta plates above each pair of doors featuring a fruity bush and the year of construction, these progressing round the estate from 1881 to 1886. It all looks wonderfully coherent, especially the pedestrianised stretch down Seal Street, while for many the highlight will be the rare sign on April Street featuring the now defunct NE postcode. Meanwhile Shacklewell's sole listed building is almost completely hidden behind, that's St Barnabas Church, a barrel-roofed Byzantine wonder that Ian Nairn considered "the best church of its date in London". I got inside for Open House five years ago but sadly they don't participate any more, just hide out of sight up a locked alleyway.
Shacklewell Road was originally called Wellington Road but was heavily bombed in the war and redeveloped very early afterwards. The architect was Frederick Gibberd who'd later go on to plan the whole of Harlow, but here he cut his teeth of a pioneering development, the Somerford Grove Estate. This was England's first mixed public housing development, combining 3-storey blocks of flats, 2-storey houses and a short run of bungalows, mostly based in L-shapes around grassy 'precincts'. The balconies and multiple playspaces perhaps feel the most forward-looking, also the pedestrianised walkways, and the 1947 build-quality is holding up fairly well. But it's also a tad beyond where the original village was, indeed the entire estate's in N16 (Stoke Newington) whereas everything else was E8 (Hackney), so it's as good a place to say farewell to Shacklewell as any. Now we all know where it is.
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