Shacklewell

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Shacklewell Green, September 2005. An old village green cast adrift in modern London.

Shacklewell is a district within the London Borough of Hackney, roughly North-east of modern-day Dalston, (which historically was due South of Shacklewell).

Modern Shacklewell is one of the more ill-defined districts of Hackney, its outlying areas having been encroached on, in public definition, by surrounding districts such as Stoke Newington and Dalston. (It is not common for a modern Londoner to refer to themselves as living in Shacklewell — so, in its way, the district illustrates the mutable nature of London placenames.)

But historically, the district name has covered quite a wide area. In the 19th century, Shacklewell extended north to include Rectory Road, Stoke Newington Common and the northern end of Amhurst Road (home owners in these areas are unlikely to consider that they live in anything other than Stoke Newington, simply for house price reasons, since their locales carry the prestigious N16 postcode.)

The entrance to Shacklewell Washing Baths, September 2005. Simple bathhouses like this were once of great importance.

One old Shacklewell municipal building still clearly visible is the 'Washing Baths' (picture right), tiny by the standards of many other London districts. Disused now, this would not have possessed a swimming pool, but constituted a communal bath- and washhouse for the working classes. Simple bathhouses like this were once of great importance. Even into the 1960s, in some working-class areas of London many dwellings did not possess their own bathrooms.

It is perhaps best to define modern Shacklewell as the small area stretching south from Downs Road, (not including any of N16), down and around Shacklewell Lane, and petering out around Dalston. The main village was situated around Shacklewell Lane—Shacklewell Green (a pleasant, but under-used little patch of foliage) being the village green. Largely residential in the mid-19th Century, it gained some light industry later on, including Eyre & Spottiswoode's printworks and a saw mill. Although some industry remains, largely Turkish-run, it has been superseded as a commercial centre by neighbouring Stoke Newington and Dalston.

Shacklewell had a manor house that at one time was occupied by the Heron family. Cecilia, the youngest daughter of Sir Thomas More, the Catholic martyr, married into the family in 1525. The house was later occupied by the Tyssen family, which owned large parts of Hackney.