45 Squared 44) ALBION SQUARE, E8
Borough of Hackney, 100m×40m
This is one of my favourite squares. It's tucked away in a dense grid of streets just east of Haggerston station, and I only stumbled upon it during lockdown because I eventually walked down the right road. It's also incredibly well documented so I could drone on about its history for ages, but let's just get all that out of the way in one quick sentence.
Albion Square was developed by the Middleton family in the 1840s on land alongside Stonebridge Common, a fragment of which survives close by, and mainly comprised on-trend Italianate paired villas sold for about £400, each lit by gas from the get-go, initially marketed as a middle class haven with a locked central garden but by the 1890s it had fallen out of favour and the square had become an eyesore, so well done to the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association for hiring Fanny Wilkinson to restore the central space and opening it up to the public, although by the 1930s things were pretty shabby again with many properties subdivided into rented flats, so much so that Hackney council proposed redeveloping everything in 1966 but the middle classes successfully fought against demolition having realised there were classy bargains to be had, successfully getting many of the properties listed, though it wasn't until 1977 that the iron railings were reinstated, and in its centenary year Albion Square Garden won first prize in the Small Publicly Maintained Garden section of the London Garden Squares Competition, and now won't you look at the place with its multi-million pound homes and prime herbaceous borders. Sorry if that was a bit brief.
The best part is the inner oasis, long and thin with gates on each side and overshadowed by four mature plane trees. There are also eight sturdy cabbage-palms adding an exotic touch along the central walkway, which loops like dumbbells at each end. December is not the best time to admire the planting and the grass does look somewhat shabby at present, but shoots that looks like crocuses are bursting up in one bed so a burst of colour can't be too far away. You can tell the horticulture's a cut above thanks to the cutesy gardener's hut by the western entrance, inside which a wicker chair, straw hat and wooden stepladder await better weather. Everyone else has to make do with a dozen public benches, four of which are hexagonal and encircle the aforementioned plane trees. The local parking enforcement officer prefers to skulk at the far end.
In the very centre is a rare Passmore Edwards drinking fountain, one of just three of his philanthropic gifts that survive in the capital (thus outnumbered by his libraries). It was installed in 1910 with twin marble bowls, and if its gold text and taps look sparkling that's because it was restored by the Heritage of London Trust a couple of years ago. The gardens' noticeboard looks at least 60 years old and has some pleasingly retro posters pointing out that dogs must be kept on leads, also a more recent screed warning visitors to keep a safe distance from 'large tractors, ride-on mowers, pedestrian mowers and strimmers'. As for wildlife the trees are not immune to the curse of the parakeet, but all I saw down below was a tentative pigeon.
If instead you walk the square outside you get to admire some mighty fine villas that an estate agent could, but never would, describe as semi-detached. They have yellowbrick walls with superfluous stucco, also basements where scullery staff would have been hidden away, also an excessive number of chimneypots. In some cases it's just a facade, everything behind having been knocked through to create an architect's wet dream, a transformation number 6 is going through at present. Ignore the slightly less authentic quartet on the western side because they're part of Albion Terrace, not Albion Square, built on the site of a piano showroom, formerly gymnasium, formerly ballroom and concert hall, formerly school, formerly literary and scientific institute. Perhaps the quirkiest feature is that Albion Square has four different styles of streetsign, none the most recent design, one of which is an iconic rarity depicting the now extinct NE postcode.
And by visiting a square in Hackney I've now achieved my intended aim of blogging about a square in every London borough as part of my 45 Squared project. Best of all I've achieved that with square number 44 so there's one more to go and all I have to do is decide how best to finish. I started with the largest London square and last week I did the oldest, so something appropriately superlative would be ideal. It has to be in the National Street Gazetteer and it has to be one I haven't blogged before otherwise Noel Square would be a shoo-in. I've got a week to mull it over.
