Kingsland, London

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kingsland is a district in the London Borough of Hackney, London, England.

Modern Kingsland is a debatable (see below) district roughly located to the west of the borough and, insofar as it is profitable to assign borders to the area, it can be said to be bounded by Dalston to the north and east, Shacklewell (itself a vanishing district) to the north, De Beauvoir Town and Haggerston to the south and Newington Green in Islington to the west. It is not to be confused with Kingsland Basin, which is a small area of redevelopment to the south of De Beauvoir Town named after a basin on the Regent's Canal.

[edit] Disappearing district

Before the railway came: This plaque, on a block of houses near the top of Kingsland Road, is from a time when the name could still be used with some confidence. (October 2005)

Kingsland is an area that lives a shadowy existence, appearing in street names, station names and preserved on some modern maps, such as the London A-Z (2005), that valiant conserver of lost London districts. But if you were to go looking for it, you would be hard put to find such a place in modern Hackney—it appears on no signposts, such as the ubiquitous blue signs that point to more vital locales. So where has it gone?

For an answer, we have to look at an accident of history. For, back in the 18th century, the area that most people now regard as Dalston was Kingsland. This is why the section of the A10 road that is modern Dalston's main shopping centre is Kingsland High Street, and why Kingsland Road, not Dalston Road, extends south from the junction.

Dalston, in fact, was quite overshadowed by Kingsland at this time, and was a less important settlement ranged along that part of Dalston Lane to the north of Graham Road. In the mid-19th century, however, the busy junction of Kingsland Road with Dalston Lane and Ball's Pond Road, which should have been called Kingsland Junction, instead became known as Dalston Junction. Perhaps this was because, at the time, Kingsland was seen as less respectable than Dalston and Shacklewell.

The Trolley Stop, once The De Beauvoir Arms. (October 2005)

When the North London Railway in 1865 adopted 'Dalston Junction' as the name of their new station—one of the most important on the line, since it connected directly with the City—Kingsland's fate was sealed. Over time, the area round the junction became known by the name of the station—a common phenomenon in London—though simple 'Dalston' was reserved for the area around the original settlement. In 1986, the closure of Dalston Junction station and its route to the city might have spelled a reprieve for Kingsland, since it was replaced with a new east-west station called Dalston Kingsland. But it was not to be—the result was that people simply dropped the 'Junction', effectively moving the centre of Dalston a kilometre west and putting the last nail in Kingsland's coffin.

Although the kindly A-Z (2005) still assigns Kingsland a place just southwest of Dalston Junction, this area became lost to Kingsland a long time ago—it is, in fact, part of De Beauvoir Town, a later settlement than either Kingsland or Dalston, but one that runs all the way north to the Balls Pond Road. The picture right shows the Trolley Stop pub (just under the 'D' of Kingsland in the 2005 A-Z on Stamford Road), however the wrought iron work betrays the pub's original identity as The De Beauvoir Arms. And about 100 metres to the west is the De Beauvoir Primary School.

[edit] Vestiges

Kingsland Waste. This narrow strip of shops and market stalls may be all that remains of the old Kingsland. (October 2005)

Is there anything left of Kingsland? It may be that there are people remaining in the area who still consider that they live in the district but, given the highly mobile nature of London's population, especially after the second world war, one may hazard a guess that they are few in number. And modern attempts to revive the name, for example the renaming of the 'Dalston Cross' shopping mall to the 'Kingsland Shopping Centre', seem a little quixotic. But there are still signs and relics to be seen, in the form of plaques on houses, the names of roads and a few stubborn fragments.

If the area has any last flicker of vitality, it is probably vested in Kingsland Waste, a narrow strip of shops and—on Saturdays—market stalls on the east side of Kingsland Road between Forest Road and Middleton Road and in Glebe Road backing on to the railway. The Waste was unused manorial land, later colonised by smallholders, in the days when Kingsland was a country village. Kingsland Waste Market's wares vary from 'cheap and useful' to out-and-out tat (which is no great criticism, if you love tat). When it's open, one feels that Ridley Road's slightly down-at-heel older brother has dropped in for a cup of tea—and maybe to borrow a fiver.

It might finally be noted that the western movement of Dalston has also made space in the east for new namings. The area around London Fields, handwaved into a sort of 'Greater Dalston' some time in the last century, has now appeared as a distinct area of Hackney under its own name. And the eastern end of Old Dalston would be considered by many now to be a part of Hackney Central.

[edit] External links

• History of Dalston and Kingsland Road (British History Online's version of A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 10 (1995). Even though this article deals, in part, with the old Kingsland, note the title.)