51°33′2″N0°3′14″W / 51.55056°N 0.05389°W /51.55056; -0.05389
Clapton Square is the second largest garden square in theLondon Borough of Hackney, located inLower Clapton,Clapton. It is lined by buildings on three sides. ItsConservation Area designated in 1969 – extended in 1991 and 2000 – takes in a larger green space separated by a stretch of open road:St John's Gardens. Those gardens have the tallest and largest building visible from all parts of the square's garden, theChurch of St John-at-Hackney, rebuilt in 1792-97 which contains older monuments. Two sides of the square are lined with tall, partly stone-dressed,classical,Georgian terraced houses.
The inside of the square is a green with shrubs, trees and historic stone ornaments. Many buildings around the square are five-storey houses with leadedfanlights,pilasters and uppercornices (white ledges) and porticos. The houses havesash windows, ornamental cast-iron balconies, columns and porches. The frontages of some houses are adorned with trainedivy orwisteria. Houses along two sides were replaced in the late 19th century, leaving Georgian houses along the north and west. Arectory was moved here in 2006.
The square was laid out in 1816 in the fields of the manor of Hackney owned by the Tyssen family, as homes for senior merchants, officers and financial brokers in an upmarket residential square.[1] It has central gardens containing a finely restored drinking fountain donated to Hackney residents by Howard Morley in 1894.
19th century Jewish writerGrace Aguilar lived in the square. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) visited, around 1905, his friendTheodore Rothstein who resided in the square.
The east side of the square was destroyed in theLondon Blitz ofWorld War II and rebuilt, to emulate as it was, at the start of the next century.
North-east of the square is Holly Villas in Clapton Passage, a short terrace of multi-storey bay-windowedVictorian villas built in 1882.
Similar grand terraces to those in Clapton Square are on the south side of adjoiningSutton Place.
Resident and eminent scientistJoseph Priestley, a fellow of theRoyal Society wrote:
On the whole I spent my life more happily at Hackney than I had ever done before
He lived at the house (demolished in 1880) on the corner of the Passage and Lower Clapton Road, in the 1790s. A mob had hounded him out of his house and laboratory in Birmingham who opposed his support for theFrench Revolution. He was invited to come to Hackney to take up the post ofUnitarian Minister at theOld Gravel Pit Chapel where he had many friends amongst the Hackney Dissenters. Aplaque marks the site of his house above the existing corner building in Lower Clapton Road. He emigrated to America in 1794 fearing a repeat of his family's persecution.
In a cottage behind Priestley's house, in the closing years of the 18th century, lived aHuguenot widow,Louisa Perina Courtauld, a designer of gold plate who married a silversmith. Their son,Samuel Courtauld (junior), founded the Courtauld dynasty of silk and artificial fibre manufacturers and a descendant founded theCourtauld Institute now in Somerset House.
5 Clapton Square - home of Thomas Briggs, chief clerk of Robarts, Curtis Bank, Britain's first railway murder victim on 9 July 1864 (Mr Biggs Hat, Kate Colqhhoun,ISBN 9780349123592 2011)
Clapton Square is near the centre of theLondon Borough of Hackney its south side has long been part of a kink in north–southLower Clapton Road where the road took over from today's pedestrianised north end of Mare Street. East isHomerton and west isDalston. Its land is mid-elevation. Most is on the deep Hackney gravels geological terrace. The Conservation Area spans parts of four electoral wards, and has approximately 250 homes.[2]
The Conservation Area contains two significant open spaces: Clapton Square and across the open south side the Churchyard of St. John-at-Hackney, known as St. John's Gardens, an L-shaped large green with permanent footpaths. The continuous bypass of the Lower Clapton Road which, open, forms the south side of the square (a hundred metres east turning into Mare Street, a pedestrianised shopping precinct leading to the nearest station) makes the greens, separate elongated and diversely of amenity value — to mid-rise apartments, Victorian villas, and grand classical homes on the north side of Hackney Central as well as Lower Clapton many of which have been subdivided into luxurious apartments.[2]
Hackney was a favourite residence of wealthy Londoners from the Middle Ages until the 19th century and the largestMiddlesex parish included in theCounty of London (created 1889). Near the south-western corner it was about 1,800 metres north of the bar (gate) of London atBishopsgate. From here a section of Ermine Street under various names led north for 3,800 metres to enterTottenham atStamford Hill. For part of its length, as Stoke Newington Road and High Street, it formed Hackney's western boundary. The parish stretched eastward about 3,600 metres to Temple Mills on theriver Lea. Besides Hackney village, the parish included Dalston, Shacklewell, Stamford Hill, Upper and Lower Clapton, Homerton, Hackney Wick, and parts of Stoke Newington village and Kingsland. The area of the parish was estimated with some accuracy at 3,300 acres (13 km2) in 1765 and 1831.[3]
TheGreat Plague of London and theGreat Fire of London the following year, 1666, commended less densely populated land immediately around the city to those conducting high level business in the city.Daniel Defoe, who lived in the border-village ofStoke Newington, described Hackney in the 1720s as comprising "twelve hamlets" and "having so many rich citizens that it contained nearly a hundred coaches". Hackney House was put up for the governor of theBank of England,Stamp Brooksbank (d. 1756).[1] An earlier neighbour was a prominent expander of (the Honourable)East India Company.
TheLondon Building Act 1774 was applied for many decades and presented a persuasive model into the 20th century. Dubbed the Black Act among some landlords because of its heavy impositions, it was passed to mitigate fire risk. It specified all houses to be of brick, windows recessed and with roofs of slate which do not overhang.
Listed buildings around the square that are local landmarks are the medievalSt Augustine's Tower, theTudor periodSutton House, the neo-classicalChurch of St John-at-Hackney, and the High Victorian Round Chapel,Lower Clapton.
