Now I have rediscovered my blog, thanks indirectly to my sister, and been encouraged to continue by a kind reply FIVE years ago, I must make an effort to write...This post will be a bit of a situation report.
Here I am, still in Hackney after all these years, 22 in this house to be accurate, and THIRTY in the borough. How it has changed in that time, perhaps most over the last ten years. In the past decade, the property market has catapulted Hackney to the top quartile of the most expensive London boroughs to live in. Finally Broadway market took off, Chatsworth market was revived, residents' parking was introduced and rapidly spread across the borough, farmers' markets and pop up shops sprang up, the old junk shops and house clearance depots disappeared, drinkers were driven from the Town Hall Square, every square metre of wasteland or brown field was developed, grand houses in the leafy avenues around London Fields and Victoria Park were colonised by high earning city professionals who painted the outside Farrow and Ball black, we had the Olympics, Yet the Narrow Way, a pretty little tail end of Mare Street, with a wide variety of architectural styles apparent in the upper storeys of buildings housing mostly pawn shops, phone shops or fast food 'outlets', held out against such gentrification. Marks and Spencer continues to sit snootily next to 'Primani', and when poor old Woolworths fell victim to the recession, locals' hopes for a Waitrose or Pizza Express were cruelly dashed by the red and white fascia of a SECOND Iceland...Now the lovely little turning, next to the churchyard, owned by St John at Hackney, home to the faux Georgian Vicarage and the wonderful old Scouts Den, a pine panelled Andersen shelter with the former stables attached, featuring on colder days an open fire, is to become a gated community of the ubiquitous and misnamed affordable housing.
That's just central Hackney; elsewhere we have acquired the Picturehouse with its four screens, bar and restaurant, numerous coffeehouses, restaurants, street feasts, wine shops, wine bars, a local brewery, the Bakehouse, art galleries, or curated spaces, and local or metro versions of all the main supermarkets (except Waitrose!). London Fields has become a destination in the summer, its onetime all weather ball pitch transformed into a wildflower meadow, the Lido restored and hosting evenings of underwater music, and on a balmy evening, every surface encrusted with picnicing hipsters and swarming with cyclists.
(TBC)
