LoveEast.45

WalkHackney's Sean Gubbins on
Well-Watered Hackney
As this year’s summer may turn out to be the driest
ever, perhaps we will take less for granted water, which,
after all, gave Hackney its name. At the end of an
English place name ‘ey’ denotes a watery connection
viz. Ely, Lundy, Sheppey. Hackney’s coat of arms has
around it a border of waves representing the borough’s
waterways, principally the River Lea, London’s second
largest river which forms Hackney’s eastern border.
We have Shaclkewell, Well Street and, in Shoreditch,
Holywell Lane, close by what were St Agnes le Clair
wells, off Old Street. These wells were tapped for ale
brewing, though not, one hopes, at the
same time as they were “frequented”,
according to John Stow in 1598, by the
“youth of the city in summer evenings,
when they walk forth to take the air.”
Stamford Hill is named after a sandy
ford used to cross the Hackney Brook,
which flowed along the line of today’s
Grazebrook Road. Stonebridge Common is
where a small stream was crossed which,
for some distance, ran east as a boundary
between Hackney and Shoredicth
parishes. Ponsford Street is a renaming of
Bridge Street, which took folk south out
of Homerton, across the Hackney Brook.
Spring Hill runs beside Springfield Park,
where sometimes springs still bubble up.
The Hackney Brook, which flowed from
its source in the hills of north London to the Lea
at Hackney Wick, had disappeared into London’s
underground sewage system by the 1860s. At times it
could flood to 70 foot, be two feet deep and was the
site of more than one tragic drowning. As it flowed
through its valley at the bottom of Clissold Park, it
was used to fill ornamental lakes. Following its course
downstream can still be seen, at the north-east corner
of Abney Park Cemetery, the mound now no longer
surrounded by water but once an islet where the
divine, Dr Issac Watts, would contemplate.
Also running through Hackney are two man-made
waterways. The oldest is the New River, completed in
1613, to bring water from Hertfordshire to the growing
City of London. Meandering along the 100 foot
contour, it flowed into Clissold Park, on a ridge above
the Hackney Brook, and then followed a sharp bend
One of the ornamental lakes,
once fed by the Hackney
Brook, in Clissold Park.
A New River Company plaque
which can still be seen in
some roads.
History
west again to flow out towards the New River Head in
Islington. Two hundred years later the Regent’s Canal
was dug through the fields of Haggerston. South of
London Fields, it is crossed by the Cat and Mutton
Bridge. The bridge existed before the canal, spanning
one of the many streams that criss-crossed wellwatered
Hackney. The stream ran down the side of
London Fields but was drained with the coming of the
canal. Another stream was the Pigwell, which emerged
near Dalston Junction and ran along the south side of
today’s Graham Road, to join the Hackney Brook.
Today we can enjoy the open waters
of Stoke Newington’s East and West
Reservoirs because in the 1980s local
campaigners successfully fought off plans
to develop them for housing. Constructed
in the 1830s (some say lined with the stone
of old London Bridge), they were to store
water before it was pumped by the New
River Company to be filtered prior to
distribution.
The New River Company supplied water
for homes in the western parts of Hackney
and Stoke Newington. Still to be seen on
a few roads are the plates bearing the
NR stamp. The east of the borough was
supplied by the East London Waterworks
Company. They took over an earlier
operation which had constructed a
reservoir, now know as Clapton Pond, to hold water
pumped from the Lea.
When the rains come this summer and challenge
Thames Water’s drainage system, maybe water will
flood once more across the road at the bottom of the
Narrow Way. It won’t be the Hackney Brook breaking out
from its conduited confinement. But it will be a reminder,
as the water congregates in the valley of Hackney’s river,
of what once flowed through these parts.
Looking for something to do one weekend?
Intrigued to find out more about Hackney?
Look up walkhackney.co.uk and pick a walk
that takes your fancy. The next two are in this
edition's What's On section. I look forward to
welcoming you on one of my walks.
LOVEEAST AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2018 31
Images courtesy of Sean Gubbins