Last Thursday, 24th October, saw the launch of my text, The Black Path, as part of the London Adventures series at The Broadway Bookshop published by Three Imposters. It was a perfect place for the launch sat right on the course of the Black Path in Broadway Market, Hackney. I’d walked this ancient drovers path back in January for a YouTube video, and writing this publication gave me an opportunity to dig deeper in the rich history of this storied thoroughfare that runs from Walthamstow to Shoreditch, and then along Old Street to Smithfield.
With the Three Imposters before the launch outside the Pie & Mash shop mentioned in the booklet (now an opticiansSt Leonards Church Shoreditch at the start of a walk along the Black Path to Broadway Bookshop
The Black Path is published by Three Imposters as part of the London Adventures series.
The shades of long-dead writers in the London streets, random meetings, quests and journeys striking lines across the city, the past seeping through the pavements, the unexpected erupting through the fabric of everyday life, glimpses of the fantastic in the ordinary: London Adventures can be any or all of these. John Rogers’ contribution to the series is a psychogeographical ramble along the Black Path, an old drovers and porters road from Walthamstow to the markets in the City, featuring pie and mash shops and pubs, Francesca’s Cafe and the Battle of Broadway Market, the London bodysnatchers, the violent origins of Haggerston Park and much, much more from the colourful history of an ancient route. Previous writers in the series include Iain Sinclair and Xiaolu Guo. Limited numbered edition of 250 copies. Price £10.00 Published by Three Impostors
London Adventures launch London Welsh Centre 29th March 2023
Andrew and Eden Kötting’s exhibition at New Art Projects, Hackney – Excuse me, can you help me please? I’m terribly worried, offered the perfect rationale for a joint stroll. The moment I saw the show announced I knew it would be the focus point in a walk. Being joined by Andrew and Eden themselves turned this into a kind of dream walk.
We met at the old Stratford Centre, outside Burger King and beneath the shoal of metallic fish installed to mask the old Stratford from the Olympic hoards. Passing through Westfield to the Waterworks River, Andrew called down to the people riding the swan pedaloes and reminsced about the journey he made from Hastings to Stratford with Iain Sinclair on just such a craft named Edith for his film Swandown. That was just before the London Olympics when passage along the Park’s waterways was prohibited. Andrew’s onward journey to the Islington tunnel followed the route our walk would take – along the Hertford Union Canal and then the Regent’s Canal.
Victoria Park, Hackney
The show at New Art Projects, is a dive into the world that Andrew and Eden have created in their Hastings studio. Walls of collages and large paintings, 3D heads made from Eden’s drawings, a screening room presenting the film Diseased and Disorderly. I then donned a VR headset which transported me Andrew’s Pyrenean farmhouse, a ‘memory hovel ‘ (as opposed to Tony Judt’s Memory Chalet), where you are led through a series of rooms and ultimately out onto a pyrenean mountain top. It was an incredible experience.
Leaving the gallery space and Andrew and Eden I took a stroll down Broadway Market, the first time in a number of years since it became seen as the epicentre of gentrified Hackney. F. Cooke’s Pie and Mash shop was shuttered up, closed for good, a new addition to the Dead Pie Shop Trail. Dropping back onto the Regent’s Canal I drifted towards Islington, taking a small detour to pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock at Gainsborough Studios, before ending the walk at the mouth of the Islington Tunnel.
Broadway MarketCity Road Basin
Excuse me, can you help me please? I’m terribly worried – runs at New Art Projects, 6D Sheep Lane London E8 4QS, until 31st July
When I lived in Hackney in the early 90’s it sometimes felt impossible to escape. It seemed vast. Recent graduates in a time of unemployment, broke and slightly adrift, for a period of time Hackney was our entire world. It was a self-contained realm with its own logic and economics – as well as its own licencing laws. No wonder Iain Sinclair titled his book about the borough that’d been his home since the late 1960’s, Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire.
I was enticed back across the Lea to London Fields at the end of March, to document the home of an amazing character, the type of bohemian maverick that Hackney produced in a manner unlike any other area of the city. Ron Hitchins had been dubbed the Prince of Petticoat Lane and then transformed himself into a Flamenco dancer whose London Fields home became the epicentre of the London flamenco community. He then started creating artworks that were displayed in galleries and private collections around the world. Ron had passed away at the end of 2019, the house had been sold and was being packed up to start a new life.
From Ron’s house I wandered across London Fields and skimmed the railway arches. I saw Beck Road as the thread that linked Ron’s outpost to the tradition of Hackney bohemianism, the Martello Street studios along the way. ‘RIP Genesis’ was still on the door of the Throbbing Gristle house. The canal led me through Hackney to pick up the Hertford Union, drained of water at that time, while the Victorian brickwork in the Cut walls was being repaired and replaced. It brought me back to the edge of Hackney Wick where I’d filmed another walk a few weeks previously, as I repeated a circuit from 2016 logging change in an area claimed as a prime site of redevelopment.
Even in the space of 5 years the pace of change was quite extreme in places. A whole new community had been constructed on Fish Island – a street plan ripped off the grids of New York or some other North American city. It generated its own microclimate of harsh winds and ill omens. The birthplace of plastic had become a Sainsburys local. But the Lord Napier remained sheathed in graffiti.
A walk from Homerton through Hackney, Dalston, Newington Green to Highbury Barn
The pull of nostalgia is a powerful thing. It was during the first lockdown that I devised this walk from Leytonstone to Highbury – from my current home to one from my past laced with happy memories. It was a comforting thought in such an uncertain time. Now in the first week of the third national lockdown it seems an apt moment to post this video of that walk which I finally embarked upon during the second lockdown.
It starts on Homerton High Street, which was recorded as Humberton in the 14th Century, and is said to be derived from a lady’s farmstead Hunburh. We take a look at the Tudor Sutton House built in 1535, before walking through St. John’s Gardens to Hackney Central. Along Mare Street we pay homage to the Hackney Empire, designed by Frank Matcham in 1901 as a Music Hall.
Our walk takes up Graham Road to Ridley Road Market, Dalston and then along Kingsland Road (Ermine Street) to the Rio Cinema. Next we go up John Campbell Road and Mildmay Road to Newington Green where we look at Richard Price’s Unitarian Chapel built in 1701.
From here we pass along Ferntower Road to Petherton Road where the New River runs beneath a green strip of land running along the middle of the street.
Highbury Fields
Highbury New Park takes us to Highbury Grove and we turn up Baalbec Road to Highbury Place.
Highbury Fields is one of my favourite spots in London, a beautiful open space covering a high ridge of land which was once known for its springs and conduits. We walk around Highbury Fields contemplating the possibility that the name suggests that this was once the location of an ancient burial mound, barrow or fortification given that the area was previously known as Newington Barrow.
Our walk ends at Highbury Barn at the site of the former pleasure garden famed for its milk, custards, and concerts.
A walk across the Lea Valley from Leyton to Stoke Newington
I was full of trepidation at the thought of crossing the River Lea for the first time since the lockdown began on 23rd March. In those three months the land on the western side of the valley came to represent the whole bulk of London as we sheltered from the virus. But I knew that eventually I’d have to confront my fear and make this journey. Stoke Newington seemed like a good destination for this first foray beyond my comfort zone. Described as “the village of visionaries” in the Time Out Book of London Walks, Stoke Newington has strong associations with non-comformism, the arts and literature.
Our walk starts in Leyton and crosses the River Lea opposite the Olympic Park then goes over Hackney Marshes from Homerton Road. A smattering of people staked themselves out in the afternoon sun of the hottest day of the year so far as temperatures hit 31 degrees. I headed down through the treeline to the Hackney Cut where two women in bikinis were recovering on the towpath from the effort of hauling their dinghy out of the canal. They stood there peeling layers of green weed from their skin like a pair of moulting swamp creatures. A constant cavalcade of cyclists pinged past dinging their bells to tell me to clear the path. It was a delightful summer scene.
Crossing the Cut I decided to revisit the Millfields Community Orchard where I joined the Hackney Tree Muskateers for the wassailing of the fruit trees in the winter of 2013. The throbbing power station beside the orchard I discovered from the comments on my video was formerly the site of the Clapton Stadium where Leyton Orient played in the days when they were Clapton Orient. It apparently later became a greyhound and speedway track.
From here my path took me across Millfields and up Southwold Road to Lower Clapton Road where I was pleasantly surprised to find draft pale ale to take away from the garden of the Crooked Billet pub. I headed up Evering Road with its notorious association with the Kray Twins and the murder of Jack the Hat McVitie. Following Brooke Road N16 I felt the presence of the Hackney Brook running beneath the ground on its way to make a confluence with the sacred River Lea.
Stoke Newington High Street was gridlocked. The old Roman Ermine Street choked with throbbing bus engines rattling the brains of the pedestrians. I took refuge in the beautiful Abney Park Cemetery, opened on the site of Abney House as a model ‘garden cemetery’. This leads us into Stoke Newington Church Street and a visit to the Ecstatic Peace Library Record Shop. I’d prepared for the walk by listening to a new track by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Strawberry Moon. Now a resident of Stoke Newington, the Ecstatic Peace Library is Moore’s publishing venture so there was a nice synchronicity to visiting his shop.
The walk inevitably leads into Clissold Park, the grounds of a house built for Quaker anti-slavery campaigner Jonathan Hoare. I hadn’t seen so many people in one place since the lockdown began – a mass of physically distancing sunbathers soaking up the early evening light. The perfect place to end the walk for the video, where I could swig the last of my ale before walking home to Leytonstone.
The approach to Woodberry Wetlands from Harringay Green Lanes was dominated by the, to put it mildly, ‘controversial’ redevelopment of Woodberry Down Estate. The blocks, old and new dominate one side of the horizon around this urban oasis created by the London Wildlife Trust out of an active reservoir. It was only when talking to London Wildlife Trust staff, here to celebrate the first anniversary of Woodberry Wetlands, that I learnt of how this reservoir drew water from the New River and fed it down to the Walthamstow Reservoirs via an underground culvert. It seems incredible that the New River, opened in 1613 to supply London with drinking water still fulfills an important function in the city’s infrastructure.
Once the Klezmer Band started to wind down I exited the Wetlands onto the New River Path and slowly followed it down to the edge of Stamford Hill carving a trail along the path of the culvert down to Walthamstow Wetlands at the other end of the pipe.
There were plenty of people passing over Clapton Common and I exchanged a few words with some Hasidic Jewish gentlemen about the fate of Tower Court Estate. One landmark that remains is the Church of the Good Shepherd, now a Georgian Orthodox Church, built by the curious Agapemonite Victorian sex cult.
New signage indicates the intention to create a trail linking the two wetlands. When I next follow this path, after the formal opening of Walthamstow Wetlands, I fully expect to see clumps of backpacked urban hikers schlepping the couple of miles between the two waterscapes.
Springfield Park is the perfect place to sit on a bench at sunset and watch the world drift by looking across at the dark wooded hills on the eastern flank of the Lea Valley. Revived, I passed Walthamstow Marshes in the fading light to the closed gates of Walthamstow Wetlands due to open this autumn. It took me back to standing at the spot just after sunset in January 2013 when I walked a wide loop from Leytonstone across Leyton Lammas Lands to Wassail the fruit trees in Clapton and Springfield Park before walking back through Walthamstow. With that in mind I made my way along the deserted market for a couple of pints in The Chequers to toast north east London’s new Wetlands.
