Hackney
The east London borough of Hackney has seen 30 years of huge change – transforming Shoreditch and Hackney Wick’s warehouses and workshops into creative studios, galleries, cafes and clubs.
Kingsland Road, which follows a Roman route, splits the borough top to bottom. Head south from Stoke Newington and you’ll pass Dalston’s busy Ridley Road market, and end in Shoreditch – known for its furniture trade before it was known for its nightlife.
Hackney was once recognised for its open expanses, with Samuel Pepys noting the “good cherries” on a visit in 1664. But as the railways expanded in the 19th century, so did the area’s population and the need for housing.
Green spaces remain – London Fields, Clissold Park and Hackney Marshes – while Homerton has one of London’s last remaining Tudor homes, Sutton House, built in 1535.
More recently, Diane Abbott, the UK’s first Black woman MP, was elected in Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1987.
Hackney Wick is home to many riverside bars and restaurants along the River Lea canal
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Colourful prints of lost East End shops
Look again at the greengrocers, delis and butchers that have disappeared from our streets
Inside Homerton Hospital, 1988
A new hospital for Hackney – its patients and staff, needles and blood
Tracey Emin & London
How this groundbreaking artist left her mark on the capital’s art scene
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A man sitting in the interior of a house on Ellingfort Road, Hackney, gazing out of the window (cibachrome print)
Hunter, Tom, Hunter, Tom
1994
A woman in bed with her cat at a house on Ellingfort Road, Hackney (cibachrome print)
Hunter, Tom, Hunter, Tom
1994
