Tag Archives: Hackney

His & Hers Hairdressers, Middleton Road, Hackney

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Following last week’s post on London Fields, for this week’s post I am again in search of another of my father’s 1980s photos, also in Hackney, but this one, judging by other photos on the same strip of negatives, seems to be from 1986.

This is His & Hers Hairdressers at the Kingsland Road end of Middleton Road:

The photo is typical of the many small businesses that occupied run down Victorian shops in the 1980s, and for a hairdressers of that decade, the shop has the obligatory display of hair style photos.

This is the same shop, forty years later in 2026:

With photos of hairdressers, you can normally tell the decade of when the photo was taken by the photos in the windows, and His & Hers had photos of 1980s big hair:

Small details in the photo, such as the person inside, probably wondering why my father is taking a photo:

On the wall to the left of the shop, something that was once a common sight:

And there are details in the 2026 photo, where an earlier shop sign has been exposed:

If you go back to the 1986 photo, there is wooden boarding across the location of the above sign, so I suspect this was covered up in 1986 and dates from an earlier business.

M. Matthews is the central name. There does appear to be a shadow name, but this also looks like M. Matthews, so perhaps an earlier version of the same name. To the right is the word Tobacco, and a bit hard to make out, but to the left the letters do seem to form Newsagent.

I cannot find a reference to an M. Matthews, but the ground floor of the building has always been a shop, and searching through Post Office directories, I found that in 1899 the shop was a Confectioner, run by Miss Elizabeth Winstone, and in 1910 it was still a confectioner, but now run by Mrs Matilda Watkins.

A jump from being a Confectioner, to a Newsagent and Tobacconist, but who also probably continued to sell confectionary does seem like a natural evolution of the shop.

I have no idea when the shop changed to a hairdressers, or when His & Hers closed. In the 1986, the ground floor occupied by the hairdresser does seem to have undergone some structural alteration, as above the windows and doors, there is the full width of the panel over the name sign, and this can also be seen in my 2026 photo, where the name sign extends over the windows and two doors.

The ornate carvings typical of the sign endings on Victorian shops can also be seen in the 1986 photo, although the one of the left had been removed by 2026.

This is probably the result of the building being converted from a shop occupying the full width of the ground floor, to a building where the first and second floors became separate residential accommodation, hence the door on the left, and the door to the shop being the one on the right.

Today, the old shop on the ground floor also appears to be residential.

The shop was built in the mid 19th century as the fields and nurseries of Hackney were covered in new homes.

In the following map, I have marked the location of the shop with the red arrow on the left. The darker road running vertically just to the left is Kingsland Road, and to the right of the map is the edge of London Fields. Middleton Road is the street with the Hairdressers, and which runs from Kingsland Road to London Fields.

Nearly all of the straight streets in the map are Victorian housing, serving the growing numbers of middle class workers of London with aspirational new homes.

The shop was part of a street design where small businesses were distributed across new residential developments, so that people who moved out to these new homes would have access to the necessities of life within local walking distance, and this included pubs.

On the corner of Middleton Road and Kingsland Road is the Fox – a rare example of a London pub that closed in around 2018, but has recently reopened (I believe with the upper floors converted to residential):

At the very top of the corner of the building is the date 1881, and this is from when the current building dates, although there has been a pub on the site for a number of centuries.

The earliest written refence I can find to the Fox is from 1809, when on the 21st of July, there was an advert in the Morning Advertiser for the auction of five, neat, brick built dwelling houses between Kingsland Green and Newington Green. Details about the properties to be auctioned could be had from Mr. Taylor at the Fox, Kingsland Road.

When the 1809 advert appeared, much of the area surrounding the Fox was still farm land and nurseries, but the pub was here because Kingsland Road was an important road to the north from the City and would have been busy, with many of those using the road in need of refreshment.

Search the Internet for stories about the Fox, and a story about the pub being used to stash part of a £6 Million Security Express robbery in 1983, by Clifford Saxe, one of the robbers and landlord of the Fox is one of the common stories from recent years.

I cannot find a firm reference from the time that it was the Fox, an account of the robbery from the Sunday Mirror on the 1st of July 1984 on wanted criminals who were living in Spain referenced that “It claimed Saxe, 57, formerly landlord of an east London pub was the brains of the gang”. Presumably that east London pub was the Fox, but again I cannot find a direct reference from the time.

In the following extract from Rocque’s 1746 map, I have marked the location of the Fox with a red arrow. The yellow dotted line shows the route of the future Middleton Road, running from Kingsland Road to the edge of London Fields, over what was nursery land, and by 1823 would be known as Grange’s Nursery:

The 1881 rebuild of the pub must have been to transform the premises that had once been surrounded by fields, to an establishment suitable for the large population who occupied the terrace streets by then covering the fields.

The population growth of Hackney mirrors this housing development. In 1801 the population was 12,730, and a century later in 1901, Hackney’s population had grown to 219,110, and this new population needed local shops, and the confectioners / newsagents and tobacconists / hairdresser shop was part of a terrace of shops at the end of Middleton Road, with the following photo being today’s view of this terrace:

In 1899, this terrace consisted of (number 11 in bold is the shop that is the subject of today’s post):

  • Number 1: John Biddle – Fishmonger
  • Number 3: Mrs Stark – Baby Linen
  • Number 5: John Edward Stark – Tobacconist
  • Number 7&9; Benjamin Wilkinson – Chemist
  • Number 11; Miss Elizabeth Winstone – Confectioner
  • Number 13: Robinson Locklison – Laundry

By 1910, the terrace consisted of:

  • Number 1: Walter Hart – Fried Fish Shop
  • Number 3: James Arthur Mullett – Grocer
  • Number 5: William Leigh – Hairdresser
  • Number 7&9: Benjamin Wilkinson – Chemist
  • Number 11: Mrs Matilda Watkins – Confectioner
  • Number 13: John Hart – Bootmaker

The above two lists shows that in the eleven years between the two, there was a high turnover in owners and types of shop. Number 1 had changed from a Fishmonger to a Fried Fish Shop, illustrating the rapid expansion of this type of take away food across London, from what is believed to be the first such shop in east London in 1860.

Number 1 is still supplying food, as today it is the Tin Café.

The only business that is the same is the Chemist of Benjamin Wilkinson. At number 13 in 1910 was John Hart, a Bootmaker. In 1986 it was a shoe repair shop, just visible to the right of the photo at the start of the post, so in the same type of business.

Another view of the terrace, number 3 to 13:

Just visible to the right of the above photo, and in an earlier photo with a train, is a bridge, which adds an unusual feature to this end of Middleton Road.

Walking along Middleton Road, under the bridge and looking back, this is the view:

The bridge carries what is now the Windrush Line over Middleton Road, and the reason for the large dip in the road is because the railway is carried on a viaduct, which runs parallel to Kingsland Road, and needs to run as a level structure, so where the railway carried by the viaduct runs across a road, the runs needs to be lowered to pass under the viaduct.

This railway was built as part of the North London extension of the London and North Western Railway, and the following extract from Railway News on the 3rd of December 1864, when the viaduct was nearing completion, explains the benefits and route of this railway:

“The London and North Western reaches the City by means of the North London extension, but the undertaking may be considered as that of the North Western.

The City extension runs from Kingsland to Liverpool Street, Bishopsgate, and is now rapidly approaching completion. The advantages of this line are very considerable.

The station is within a short distance of the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England and many offices in which the chief monetary transactions of the City are conducted. Five or seven minutes walk will bring you to Threadneedle-street, Moorgate-street, or Gracechurch-street, and all the other busy thoroughfares, lanes and courts hard by – no small consideration to the thousands of railway travellers who come from the North daily within that important radius who are anxious to economise time.

Further, this line shortens the distance between all the stations on the North London line, from Camden to Kingsland and the City by no less than five miles. At present time the North London, on leaving Kingsland, goes by Hackney, Bow, and Stepney, describing nearly three-quarters of a circle before it reaches Fenchurch Street. This detour, with its super abundant traffic and crowded junctions, with therefore be avoided by all coming west of Kingsland to the City.

The extension is about 2.5 miles in length, and proceeds almost in a direct line from its junction with the North London proper to Bishopsgate, With the exception of a cutting near the starting point it passes all the way on a brick arch viaduct which has all but been finished. Running parallel with the Kingsland-road.”

The line would go on to terminate at Broad Street Station, next to Liverpool Street.

This railway helped with the construction of the houses across the fields of Hackney, as for workers to move to Hackney, they needed an easy form of transport to their place of work, and the new railway extension was ideal. For the residents of Middleton Road, Haggerston Station was a short walk south along Kingsland Road. The station opened on the 2nd of September 1867.

Bells Weekly Messenger on the 9th of September 1867 described the new station: “NEW STATION, NORTH LONDON RAILWAY – A large and commodious new station was opened on Monday on the North London Railway, in Lee-street, Kingsland Road. The new Haggerston Station commands the neighbourhood, and also the Downham-road and De Beauvoir Town, which places are situated too far from the Dalston Junction to profit by the latter.”

The line closed in 1986 (Haggerston Station had closed in 1940 due to a number of factors including wartime economy measures and bomb damage to the station).

The station and railway along the viaduct reopened in 2010 as part of London Overground, and in 2024 the railway was renamed as the Windrush Line.

So this small part of London had shops, a pub and a station connected to the City. The other important attribute of a Victorian city was a church, and In Middleton Road is the 1847 Middleton Road Congregational Church, now the Hackney Pentecostal Apostolic Church:

Middleton Road is mainly comprised of terrace houses, but there are some interesting exceptions, such as the building in the middle of the following photo:

Which has an entry to the rear of the building named Ropewalk Mews:

I cannot find the reason for this name, and why the building is very different to the terrace houses that occupy the street.

A ropewalk was / is a long length of land or covered space, where the individual strands of a rope could be laid out and then twisted to form a continuous length of rope.

London had plenty of ropewalks, but these were usually close to the Thames, as the main customer for the ropes produced would have been the thousands of ships that were once to be found on the river.

Rocque’s map of 1747 does not show a ropewalk, although the map does identify ropewalks in other parts of London. In 18th and early 19th century maps of the area, the land is shown as agricultural and a nursery, no mention of a ropewalk.

It may have been that there was a small ropewalk here to produce rope to be used in the bundling of produce from the nursery, but I cannot find any confirmation of this.

One of the architectural developments that was seen in Victorian houses of the mid 19th century was the bay window, which was a way of breaking up a terrace, and a change from the Georgian emphasis on an unbroken terrace of flat, uniform walls facing onto the street. We can see this development in the terrace houses of Middleton Street:

Another change was the semi-basement, where the ground floor is slightly raised, and reached from the streets by steps, allowing the upper part of the basement to just poke above ground level, with a space between basement window and the retaining wall to the street. This development allowed natural light into the basement, and again we can see this in the above terrace.

The 1881 census provides a view of the employment of those who moved into Middleton Road. There were a very wide range of jobs, including: Bank Clerks, Decorators, Commercial Travellers, Commercial Clerks, Boot Makers, Locksmiths, Plumbers, Stock Brokers Clerks, Stationers Assistant, Printers, Teachers, Newspaper Advertising Agents, Drapers, Draughtsmen, Watchmakers, etc. All the vast range of trades and employment types to be found in the rapidly expanding Victorian London of the late 19th century.

Where a job was listed such as a Bootmaker, these were frequently not an individual worker, rather an employer, for example at number 33 Middleton Road was George Clarke, a Bootmaker who was listed as employing 25 men and two boys.

Some of the residents had private means, for example at Oxford Cottage in Middleton Road was Fanny Smyth, listed as a widow, with her occupation as “income from interest of money”. What is fascinating about the 19th century census is how frequently people would marry later in life, and in Fanny Smyth’s household were three children, two daughters aged 31 and 21 and a son of 28, all listed as single.

Many of the houses in Middleton Road also had a Domestic Servant, again confirming that these new streets were occupied by the new middle class.

Whilst in 1881, the majority of people who lived in Middleton Road were listed a being born in Middlesex, (the historic county that from 1965 is now mainly part of Greater London), there were a very significant number of people from the rest of the country, and a small percentage from Ireland. Throughout much of the 19th century, London was expanding both in terms of employment and residents, by attracting people from the rest of the country.

More of the homes in Middleton Street in which the Bank Clerks, Decorators, Commercial Travellers etc. of 1881 would live:

Middleton Road is a perfect example of the mid 19th expansion of London, as the fields of Hackney were taken over by the houses of the growing middle class.

The shops and pub at the Kingsland Road end of the street are a perfect example of how local shops were planned as part of this expansion, and for decades served the needs of the local community.

One can imagine the early morning being busy with the working residents heading to the train station to travel into the City for their work, and in the evening, a busy pub, with the option of a stop off for fish and chips after the pub, then heading back to your terrace home in Middleton Road.

When writing these posts, I often have music on in the background, and for this post it was YouTube, as it has a random playlist based on what I have listened to before, and a track I have not heard for many years came up, the 1982 Lucifer’s Friend by the Rotherham / Sheffield band Vision.

The His & Hers Hairdressers was photographed in 1986, and the track by Vision is a perfect example of brilliant 1980s music, including the type of hair styles that you may have been able to get in His & Hers:

David Bowie Centre and V&A East Storehouse

Last week, we went to have a look at the small David Bowie exhibition, which forms part of the David Bowie archive held by the V&A. It is located at the new V&A East Storehouse at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park:

It is a small, but interesting exhibition of some of the costumes worn by Bowie, photos, song lyrics, ideas for films, plays etc.

The Bowie exhibition and archive is a small part of the Storehouse, which is home to a vast collection of items not on display in the main museums.

You are free to wander around the walkways on several levels between racks of items collected over very many years:

There were a number of London related items on display, for example a London County Council plaque recording that Emma Cons and Lilian Baylis lived here:

The plaque dates from 1952 and was installed on the house at 6 Morton Place, Stockwell. The house was demolished in 1971 and the plaque was saved with the intention that it would go on display in the V&A Covent Garden Theatre Museum. The Theatre Museum closed in 2007, and the plaque is now on display the V&A East Storehouse.

The V&A also has a number of items relating to Robin Hood Gardens, the social housing estate in Poplar, east London, including a section of the west block, to preserve the architectural vision.

One of the items on display is a collage from the Robin Hood Gardens Project:

And some of the fittings from Robin Hood Gardens:

The V&A East Storehouse is a fascinating way to display part of the collection that would not normally be on display in the V&A museums, and is well worth a visit.

The Flower Sellers and London Fields

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The Flower Sellers is a statue (not sure if that is the correct word to describe this large artwork), in London Fields, Hackney. My father photographed the statue in 1989:

Last Wednesday, the first day without any rain, and with sun forecast, I went to find the Flower Sellers, and this is how they look today (unfortunately with a bright sun behind):

Most descriptions about the statue describe the installation as being in the 1980s, which I think I can narrow down to 1988.

The two figures are holding baskets possibly of flowers (which makes sense given the name of the work), but may also contain other produce. Around the base of the work, and in the surroundings of the Flower Sellers there are a number of sheep. I will come onto the reasons for these later in the post.

London Fields is a large area of open space in Hackney, just to the west of the Weaver line station, also called London Fields. I have circled London Fields in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Surrounding the main statue, there are a number of stone seats, each with the top made up of colourful mosaics, depicting everyday items, such as scissors, threads of cotton, and bottles in the following example:

The name of the work is the Flower Sellers, and presumably it is flowers that are meant to be represented within the baskets held by the two people. I am not so sure. There are very few direct references to the baskets holding flowers, some references are to “different produce” sold in the nearby Broadway Market.

In 2018, after 30 years of being exposed to the elements, the work was in need of some repair, and the council commissioned local mosaic artist Tamara Froud from MosaicAllsorts to carry out the work. Today, the items in the baskets do look a bit like colourful flowers, but this could have been the result of the restoration emphasising the patterns and colours:

In my father’s 1989 photo, the items in the baskets were very plain and lacking any colour. The photo was only a year or less, after the work was installed, so perhaps the contents of the baskets were still to be finished.

The work does have a direct reference to a previous use of London Fields. The work consists of a number of seats in the immediate area of the central figures, and these follow the designs at the base of the figures, with colourful mosaic topped seating, and sheep:

These sheep, around the seating and at the base of the central work represent the time when London Fields were used as a stopping off place for animals being taken to the markets of London.

Rocque’s map of 1746 shows London Field as an area of open space (in the centre of the following map) to the west of Church Street (today Mare Street). Ribbon development along Mare Street of the village of Hackney, with the village surrounded by fields:

The following larger extract from Rocque’s map shows where London Fields is located (red circle) with respect to the main routes from the north of the city down to Smithfield Market. The yellow arrow points to the main route, now the A10, Kingsland Road, and the green arrows point to a detour from this road that passes through Hackney, where sheep could be rested at London Fields, before re-joining the main route to head to the market:

Volume 10 covering Hackney from “A History of the County of Middlesex”, describes London Fields being first record in 1540, with the singular use of the name, with Fields seeming to become more frequent in later centuries.

There are references to the area being worn bare by the grazing of sheep.

Other references to this activity were, and some still are, to be found surrounding London Fields. There was a Mutton Lane (look to the lower left of London Fields in the first extract from Rocque’s map above), and there was, and still is a Sheep Lane, as seen in the following map (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

There is also a Cat and Mutton pub at the London Fields end of Broadway Market, and crossing the Regent’s Canal is the Cat and Mutton Bridge.

As could probably be expected in an open area, with lots of travellers passing through, there was a significant amount of crime in and around London Fields.

The following is a small sample of newspaper reports mentioning London Fields from the decades in the mid 18th century around the time of Rocque’s map:

7th of October 1741: “On Thursday Night, between Seven and Eight o’clock, five Persons, singly, were robbed between the Goldsmiths Alms houses and London Field, going to Hackney, by three Footpads, who have for some time infested those Parts.”

30th of July 1730: “Monday afternoon the following acts were committed by a man with one arm, very genteelly dressed – with his sword he wounded two ladies in London Field, Hackney; and a short time afterwards, with the same weapon, he twice stabbed a gentleman upon Dalton Downs.”

17th of October 1750: “Yesterday as a Servant of a Mercer in Cheapside, who had been to deliver some Good’s at a Lady’s at Hackney, was returning home about Five o’clock in the Evening, he was stopt between London Field and the Road by a Man genteelly dressed in a light coloured Coat and black Waistcoat, who seized him by the Collar, and presenting a Pistol to him, threatened to blow his Brains out if he did not deliver his Money, which he did, to the Amount of Twenty Shillings and Three-pence, and the Fellow was going away; but on the Servant’s desiring him to return the Half-pence for a Pint of Beer, he gave him three Half pence, then took of his Hat and Wig and tripped up the man’s heels and pushed him into a Ditch, and then made off across the Field.”

4th of December 1753: “On Tuesday Night, between Seven and Eight o’clock, Mr, Cornelius Mussell was robbed in London Field, Hackney, of twenty five shillings, by five men armed with Pistols and Cutlasses; and last Night, two Gentlemen in a Coach coming to Town from Hackney, were robbed on Cambridge Heath supposed to be the same Gang.”

13th of November 1770: “Last Night an out door Clerk belonging to Mr. Pearson, Wine and Brandy Merchant, in Spitalfields, who had been at a Public House in Hackney, receiving cash to the amount of £30, was stopped by two Footpads in London Field, who robbed him of all the Money he had received.”

On the 25th of February 1773, Thomas Bond was convicted at the Old Bailey for robbing Thomas Sayville of his watch and money in London Field, Hackney – he was initially sentenced to death, but this was commuted to transportation.

The threat of a death sentence, or transportation seems to have been very little deterrent to these types of crimes given the very high number of robberies that were reported across London.

There were other strange events in London Fields, including:

31st July 1789: “Monday evening a battle was fought in London Fields, Hackney, between two butchers of Bishopsgate Street, which, according to the connoisseurs of the pugilistic art, was the choicest ever known. The combatants behaved with uncommon resolution during an hour and ten minutes, when it was ended by the least being carried off the field for dead. The bets ran 5 to 3 in favour of the loser – many knock-down blows were given and received on both sides, and on the close of the contest, neither was able to stand alone.”

Almost 80 years after Rocque’s map, in 1823, Hackney was still a village surrounded by fields, with London Field continuing to be an open area to the west, and still being used to graze sheep on their way to market:

In Rocque’s map of 1746, the land to the west of London Fields is shown with horizontal and vertical dashed lines, rather than the symbols used to indicate normal grass fields. In the above 1823 map, this area is now marked as Grange’s Nursery, a large area of space almost running up to Kingsland Road, with what must have been the owners, and or nursery buildings in the centre of the space.

Another comparison between the 1746 and 1823 maps shows that there had not be that much additional development around London Fields. Some additional building, but mainly along Mare Street.

This would all change in the following decades, with the period from 1840 being one of considerable change, with rows of Victorian housing, industrial buildings and streets being developed between Hackney and Kingsland Road, with London Fields surviving as an area of public open space.

There were many challenges by developers to London Fields, with small bits of the space being taken for housing, and there was also digging for gravel at places across the space.

A campaign by those concerned with preserving London Fields as a public open space helped to make the Metropolitan Commons Act of 1866 reach Parliament and become law, with London Fields becoming the responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

There were continuing issues with gravel digging and fences encroaching onto the space, but these were always challenged and fences torn down. When the London County Council came into being, London Fields was levelled and seeded with grass, paths were created, and Plane trees planted, with a bandstand being built in the centre of the fields.

Looking towards the south of London Fields from the Flower Sellers:

Looking north along London Fields:

In the above photo, the space looks very empty, however it was busy with people, just not on the grass, which was rather muddy after many days of rain.

The main footpath to the right had a continuous stream of walkers and runners, and to the north, the play areas were full of groups of small children in high-vis jackets being shepherded by nursery school teachers, although the play area to the south was empty:

The above photo shows some of the houses that lined the eastern, Hackney side of London Fields, the first side of the fields to be developed.

As with many open spaces in London, London Fields has seen a number of political meetings. One such was reported in the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette on the 15th of March 1886:

“MEETING OF SOCIALISTS ON LONDON FIELDS – On Saturday afternoon, a mass meeting of the employed and unemployed took place on London Fields, convened under the auspices of the Hackney and Shoreditch Branch of the Social Democratic Federation, to consider what was best to be done to alleviate the distress that now prevails to such a terrible extent in the district. A large crowd , numbering some two thousand persons, gathered round a cart in the centre of the fields, from which speeches were delivered.

A large body of police, some 300 on foot and 50 mounted, were on duty. The mounted men were placed at the entrance of the streets abutting the fields, and the other constables paraded the footpaths in pairs. Most of the shops in the immediate vicinity were closed.

The Chairman referred to the rapid growth of the Mansion House Fund since the Trafalgar Square riots as indicating the re-awakening of the well-to-do classes on the subject of the increasing amount of distress in the country, whereat he was interrupted by cries of ‘No charity’, and ‘We don’t want it’. It was not the relief funds that they wanted, but the right to live and to labour guaranteed by the State. If they had justice they would enjoy the wealth they created.”

Charles Booth’s poverty maps created towards the end of the 19th century, shows the contrasting levels of wealth and poverty around London Fields from the dark blues of “Very poor, casual. Chronic want”, up to the reds of “Middle Class, Well-to-do”, with this later grouping occupying the new terrace houses that had been built in the previous couple of decades:

On the north eastern edge of London Fields, there is a pub – the Pub on the Park:

The Pub on the Park is a survivor of the 19th century buildings surrounding the north east of the park.

On the night of the 21st of September, 1940, the area around London Fields suffered considerable bomb damage, resulting in the post-war demolition of the buildings around the pub, which was restored and survived.

The pub was originally called the Queen Eleanor and renamed to the Pub on the Park in 1992.

The pub seems to date from the mid 19th century development of the area, and the first references I can find to the Queen Eleanor date from the 1850s. There may have been a pub on the site prior to the current building, as a place where people travelling through the area, and grazing their sheep in the fields, would have also attracted businesses such as pubs, although I can find no evidence of the predecessor to the current building, although I suspect it was part of the mid 19th century development.

The sign of the Pub on the Park:

From the photo of the pub, it is clear that it was once a corner pub, and a look at the other side of the pub shows that it was once joined to another house. This side is also now decorated:

The reason for the original name of the pub is clear in the following extract from the 1893 OS revision. The pub is circled and Eleanor Road runs upwards from the left of the pub (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

What is remarkable about the above map is that Eleanor Road, and the houses along the left hand side of Tower Street were not rebuilt after the war, and the area was taken into London Fields, grassed over, and is now part of that open space.

The pub is now isolated on the edge of the fields.

Follow Eleanor Road to the north and the road meets Richmond Road. The houses along the southern side of Richmond Road, at the northern end of the park, were also not rebuilt and London Fields now extends to border Richmond Road, with the exception of a small stretch of housing to right and left.

Tower Street in the above map is now Martello Street. It is always interesting to walk the side streets as there is frequently so much to see, for example just before where Martello Street dives under the railway viaduct:

At the north western corner of London Fields is the London Fields Lido:

The Lido was one of many opened across London during the 1920s and 1930s (see here for a bit about the Parliament Hill Lido), although all the news reports from the time refer to it as an open air swimming bath rather than a Lido.

The Lido was opened in 1932, and was advanced for its time, having an advanced filtration plant as well as a water aerator in the form of a fountain. As well as the pool, there was a sunbathing area, first aid room and a refreshment kiosk, and the Lido was designed and built by the London County Council.

The Lido closed for the war, opening in 1951, the same year as the Festival of Britain. I do not know if these events were connected, but the Festival did act as a catalyst for other post war improvements and renovations to public infrastructure and facilities.

The Lido remained open until 1988, after which there were proposals to demolish the Lido and return the area to grass within the overall London Fields grassland, as had happened with the post war demolition of the bomb damaged housing at Eleanor Street..

The London Fields User Group were concerned about the threats to the Lido, and the loss of such a facility, so a sub-committee was established to campaign for the reopening of the Lido.

The condition of the Lido deteriorated rapidly, with the Lido sub-committee arranging work to try and stop too much deterioration, whilst continuing to campaign for restoration and reopening.

Funding and designs were finally available in 2005 when work started, with the Lido reopening in October 2006 for a few months for testing. More work was needed over winter, and the Lido fully reopened for Easter 2007.

The Lido seemed busy on the day of my visit to London Fields, and, despite being a February day there were plenty of swimmers in the open air pool, although having the water at 24 degrees centigrade must help.

From sheep grazing to a Lido, London Fields has been a key part in the development of Hackney for centuries, and continues to be a valuable area of open space surrounded by dense streets of 19th century development, as London engulfed the small villages surrounding the city.