Kingsland, London

Kingsland was a small road-side settlement centred on Kingsland High Street, on the Old North Road (the present A10), Middlesex. It has now been subsumed within inner city London, principally as part of Dalston in the Borough of Hackney and has lost its separate identity. [Cherry and Pevsner (1988) "London 4: North": 475]

History

The small villages of Kingsland, Dalston, Newington and Shacklewell were all situated within Parish of Hackney and were grouped together for assessment purposes. Together they had only as many houses as the village of Hackney. It is recorded that Samuel Pepys 'used to shoot with bow and arrows', here, in the 17th century. [Cherry and Pevsner (1988) "London 4: North": 475] In 1672, Kingsland had 28 householders assessed for hearth tax, but expanded rapidly in the 18th century, along the line of Kingsland Road [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22698 "Hackney: Dalston and Kingsland Road", A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 10: Hackney (1995), pp. 28-33] accessed: 07 December 2007] .

The main part of the village was located near Dalston junction where the road to Hackney left the main road, and today this is only commemorated by the name of "Kingsland Shopping centre".

Disappearing district

Today Kingsland has 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 the modern Borough of 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.

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 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.

Vestiges

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.

There is a canal basin on the Regents Canal which retains the name Kingsland Basin.

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.

Education

Transport

References

Bibliography

*Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner (1998) "London 4: North". Penguin: London.

External links

* [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22698 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.)
* [http://www.brickfields.org.uk/kingsland/index.htm "Brickfields" (Hackney History project)] Kingland Road