london

stoke newington-dalston
herne hill-brixton
brockley-new cross

same thing? discuss

I dunno, when I moved here Stoke Newington had a rep for being (um, what was it called back then?) alternative, the cliche was the cider swilling end of the anarchist spectrum, right? There was never a great deal of that in Herne Hill, and what there was amounted to Brixton overspill as far as I could tell. Stoke Newington went through its own edgy -> yummy gentrification process, which seemed to me largely independent of what happened to Dalston (though it may have been partially responsble for what happened to Dalston, I guess?).

("When I moved here": here = London, not Stoke Newington, I'm firmly SE15/SE22 with a short sojourn all the way over in SE16; when = 1998.)

i feel like all these little micro-histories, growing patiently like moss and lichen - with the occasional kudzu vine bolting startlingly through the branches - have just been bush hogged, the whole thing plowed under. shitty fourth-floor council flats going for £385K in stamford hill and bow just makes a nonsense of this stuff.

I think that makes it more important to *remember* the micro-histories.

and to not buy shitty council flats in stamford hill for $385k

Remember though, Dalston and Stoke Newington were where people who couldn't afford Islington always wound up buying.

That's certainly been true for the last 10-15 years but Stoke Newington's position as somewhere with a bohemian, middle class reputation probably predates the rise of Islington as a particularly desirable neighbourhood.

Like Islington, it has always had huge pockets of deprivation and crime, though. I'm not sure it ever went through a phase of having an 'edgy' reputation as a whole, it's more like two separate places (one rough, one leafy and middle class) layered on top of each other.

When I first moved back to London (1998) right through the CTCL/beginning of Plan B years, Stoke Newington was a place of squat raves, edgey youngperson houseshares, free jazz basements and, yes, lesbians. There was a kind of leafy bit around Church St and the park, but that was Islington overspill, I guess, rather than the edgey gentrification that was coming up the A10 from edgey youngpersons priced out of Hoxditch.

Odd how so many views of different bits of London can coexist in people's minds.

aye, t'were nothing but fields when i moved here one score and four months ago.

i hear there was a bit around lordship road that was/is a red light district

xp, To me, the identity that people associate with Stoke Newington (the middle-class, leftist, gay one) is inseparable from its history as a place where a lot of liberal, secular Jewish people settled in the 70s. I think that's distinct from Islington in a lot of ways. That might be more around Church Street and Stamford Hill, rather than the High Street, though.

And yes, there's a red light district around Brownswood Road (iirc) near Lordship Lane.

See, this, to me, is more reason for remembering all the micro-histories, because without them, areas with a rich heritage end up just being associated with "whatever people you knew there/whatever things you did there."

Totally! The Islington overspill thing started in the '70s and basically went anyplace in the Borough of Hackney where flat-fronted Georgians and other old, pretty houses were available eg. Clissold Park, Mildmay Park and de Beauvoir. The 'trendy Jewish people of N16' thing makes sense, too - explains a few friends who are 10 years younger than me, who grew up there.

When I first came to London, Stokey *was* very crusty/lesbian; we called it Stoic Newington.

and to not buy shitty council flats in stamford hill for $385k

Stamford Hill or on top of Old Stokey as my friend David used to quip... and talking of Old Stokey

Dalston and Stoke Newington were where people who couldn't afford Islington always wound up buying.

And now Walthamstow has become the destination for people priced out of Stoke Newington

xp Love that egg stores sign

xp indeed, I am one of those ex-Stokey people now in Walthamstow.

we called it Stoic Newington.

idgi

better transport links in walthamstow than stokey

xxpost

xxxp Quite a common journey over the years, i believe. A lot of the suburban areas surrounding Walthamstow were populated by people moving out of Hackney and Haringey. I think of my London family as being from Waltham Forest but have lots of great aunts, etc, buried in Abney Park and am reliably informed that my great-great-grandfather used to sell carbonated drinks on Hackney Marshes in the 1870s.

hah that's great! I lived in Lower Clapton until I was 2, which seems to be the point around which I have gravitated for the last 7 years or so...

Herne Hill's gentrification is mostly due to being right next to DULWICH, it's nothing to do with Brixton. See also the pretty much complete gentrification of East Dulwich over the last 20 years, in which it's gone from being Peckham-with-nicer-houses to Stoke Newington South-of-the-River. But yeah, it's all yummy mummification, although a lot of them will be ex-hipsters now comfortably in their 30s.

Haha, Waltham Forest is getting way, way, way too close to where I grew up. Is there even still a forest there?

And that actually makes more sense, of Herne Hill being Dulwich overspill rather than Brixton overspill, that's actually kinda more its vibe. (Though things like the Lambeth Country Fair being in Brockwell Park make it Brixton-ish. Brockwell Park is a Brixton park.) I no longer understand Dulwich, though I'm not sure I ever did, as the "East" and "North" anexes of it don't correspond to geographical directions, but to train stations? It's so confusing.

Waltham Forest was the old name for Epping Forest which is still there.

edgy-hipster gentrification and yummy-mummy gentrification are pretty distinct things and i get the impression the latter is what's happening to herne hill? (also lower clapton)

Really it's the difference between people moving for cheap rents + cool places to go out and people buying up housing stock. Having a park nearby helps with the latter as well.

OK, these are childhood (under the age of 9) memories, so very unreliable. There's definitely a forest in Epping, and I was born in the borough of Epping, it says so on my birth certificate. Also I have been to Epping Forest lots, recently.

But there's another ancient woods near Waltham Cross/Cheshunt area (might be as far out as Cuffley?) which I think I might have decided was the actual Waltham Forest in my child-head? We used to walk there a lot. I've no idea what it was called now.

ayo, what's a good wood in SE? Done Nunhead reservoir/One Tree Hill to death.

I only know remnants of the Great North Wood stretched between Crystal Palace and Tooting. Some of that is love, but very small. Would be happy to know of other South woods accessible by TFL.

I've been looking at maps. Oh, England, I love you. There is no forest in the London borough of Waltham Forest. The woods are several miles north, in Waltham Abbey. That makes so much sense! Not.

weirdly google maps labels this bit as walthamstow forest
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=waltham+forest&ll=51.599854,0.006523&spn=0.008623,0.016522&hnear=London+Borough+of+Waltham+Forest,+Greater+London,+United+Kingdom&gl=uk&t=h&z=16

That's not actually true btw. There is a bit of Epping forest that for some reason wasn't built over, from Hollow Pond by the hospital in the south east of the borough going up north to Chingford.

xpost to BB

Yes, yes, but that's Epping Forest. It's just funny that Waltham Forest is not actually in Waltham Forest. Come on, that's just.. typical.

Waltham Forest was the old name for Epping Forest which is still there.

Dude, there is another Waltham Forest. In Waltham Abbey. Go and look at the map! My 9-year-old memories were better than I give them credit for!

does your map say walthamstow forest

Totally! The Islington overspill thing started in the '70s and basically went anyplace in the Borough of Hackney where flat-fronted Georgians and other old, pretty houses were available eg. Clissold Park, Mildmay Park and de Beauvoir. The 'trendy Jewish people of N16' thing makes sense, too - explains a few friends who are 10 years younger than me, who grew up there.

When I first came to London, Stokey *was* very crusty/lesbian; we called it Stoic Newington.

― baked beings on toast (suzy), Wednesday, January 15, 2014 6:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Interesting reading/seeing reference to Mildmay Park and seeing it as a bus destination cos the Mildmay pub was a place I used to go as a teen to go to a mod disco there. Not really remembering how parts of that area of LOndon fit together beyond going there on a 55 from Whipps Cross or Bakers Arms.
Interesting to walk around Dalston or wherever that was on the way to the Shacklewell Arms over Xmas too. Seeing that the market there doesn't seem to have changed from previous times I've walked through there which could be over a 20 year stretch or something.
Also wondering what hope a low wage earning person in London now has to get onto the rental circus if they lose their place in it through bad fortune as appears to be happening to somebody I know. Person who has said for years taht they can't see how a person could afford to even pay for a deposit in town.

Matt - how do you know that Herne Hill's gentrification is Dulwich-related rather than Brixton-related? I'm not arguing that you're wrong, it's just I had managed to pick up the opposite view (mostly I guess from the people I knew who'd moved to HH). I'm more interested in how we get these impressions than I am in the "true" answer esp when the true answer is probably "a bit of both".

Agree with you about cool-things-to-do against housing stock.

Interesting seeing taht about Waltham Forest since it was the borough I lived in from the age of 1 until I left the UK. Wonder when what was designated Eppng Forest was designated. Is it a designation that was agreed on bureaucratically and missed part of what was being redesignated from Waltham Forest, which judging from what is being said here may have been a pretty large area.
I missed seeing Waltham Abbey over Xmas cos I was in bed coughing and sneezing phlegm while my mum, brother and his girlfriend went out there for a walk. Subsequently not sure how far out Waltham Abbey is but am thinking its upwards of 20 miles away from Walthamstow. I never have understood what the inter-relationship between various Walthams in roughly the same area is. Is it a historic thing connected to a baronry or something?

I do know how far out Epping is roughly which is quite a distance. But I still wouldn't know exactly, so calling everything in that large area Epping Forest outside of it having to do with who was looking after it seems a bit vague. Again I should probably know what the history is since I grew up in that area, I was in Woodford Green before moving to Walthamstow. Educated from pre-school in that area.

The gentrification of Herne Hill seems to have preceded that of Brixton by several years, so I'm going on that really. But the Brixton thing has probably accelerated it.

ayo, what's a good wood in SE? Done Nunhead reservoir/One Tree Hill to death

Dulwich and Sydenham Hill woods are fairly small but you can get lost in them and there are some awesome views over London and some fun things hidden away in them, like this folly:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZGrx2SwpQ4Q/TLtd0THYMhI/AAAAAAAAB-s/-ShCkE5mI7I/s1600/sydenham.jpg

Oxleas Wood, up past Blackheath, is fantastic as well, plus it has Severndroog Castle in it.

I am trying to remember what -stowe means as a place name suffix, but my memory is so befuddled! I think this is the key on which this hinges.

Wikipedia has it that Walthamstow is nothing to do with Waltham at all, but was Welcome-stow, and was corrupted by drift into the name of the nearby forest.

Epping Forest used to be much, much larger than it is presently; it covered much of Essex and bits of Hertfordshire, IIRC.

Waltham is from the Saxon Weald-ham (Weald, as in Kent, meaning deep woods or wild land) so all the bits of Waltham are so named because of their proximinity to the great hunting forest of Epping - ham (village) by the weald (woods). Which is why all the Walthams are so removed from one another; a massive great royal hunting forest used to be in the way.

Still not sure about Walthamstow - ah, but here. Stow in old English placenames = "place of assembly" or "holy place." Can't see how it would be the "holy place" with the Abbey being the holy centre of the district. Perhaps the outside-the-forest assembly place for the hundred associated with the forest?

Actually no, I've got the place name lookup server online again and it's Welcome's Stow. Naught to do with Waltham originally at all:

http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Essex/Walthamstow

x-post that folly is in the remains of the Great North Wood! I've been there!

Cheers Matt, might amble down Rye Lane and down to Dulwich woods on saturday and then use the Pizza Express gift card Father Christmas got me on Saturday, then do Oxleas on Sunday. Perfect weekend.

queries: why is finsbury park so far away from finsbury?

what about tottenham court road?

and are forest hill and forest gate so named for the sole purpose of getting people to go to the wrong ends of london by mistake for laughs?

see also Shooters Hill and Shoot Up Hill.

The gentrification of Herne Hill seems to have preceded that of Brixton by several years, so I'm going on that really.

Ah OK, don't think I agree with that, but I've been through that upthread.

I think "stow" just meant "place" in middle English.

http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/ml2hpZwbnZc4a7-dFnQXWaw.jpg