W a y m a r k s ~: Abney Park, Stoke Newington

Clissold Park

Yesterday I took a break from my academic writing projects, and, making the most of the wonderfully clement weather, I hopped on the Number 73 bus, heading to Stoke Newington. I lived in ‘Stokey’ for five years from 1997, and I think this was my first visit back there since at least 2004. All-in-all, it really was a perfect day. I spent a nostalgic afternoon wandering around Clissold Park, where I used to like sitting on one of the benches by the ponds, reading in the early summer evenings after work. I was glad to see the Public Library is still there, but most of the shops and restaurants along Church Street have changed since my day; except for one or two, like Church Street Bookshop, Rasa, The Blue Legume, and, happily, the wonderful old pubs.

A Perfect Day - Stoke Newington - 1998

Stoke Newington seemed a lot busier than I generally recalled it, although this was probably due to the wonderful weather. A not too crisp, cold clear blue sky made it feel a lot like Spring had truly begun at last. I noticed crops of crocuses and snowdrops were out in many places, adding a welcome dash of colour beneath the still bare branches overhead. Claustrophobically shying away from the slow foot-shuffling crowds, I ducked into Abney Park Cemetery, and proceeded to get happily lost in the verdant woodland, drinking in that dank fecundity of the air with the ground softly springy underfoot. There seems to be a lot of restoration work going on around the entrances on both Church Street and the High Street, plus the long derelict, pigeon-haunted chapel in the centre of the cemetery appears to be in the process of being exhumed from years of ruin and neglect.

Church Street, Public Library

After emerging from the pleasant quiet of this labyrinthine Gothic woodland, I wandered up Cazenove Road to Springfield Park, with its wonderfully dizzying vista looking down to the River Lea where it meanders lazily alongside Walthamstow Marshes. Crossing the bridge to Springfield Marina, I found multitudes of people once more. All of them, out for a stroll like me. Ambling along the gravel track, passing under the ‘Avro Arches’, heading past flowering hawthorn bushes towards the next footbridge where I crossed and doubled-back along the opposite shore. Passing the many-patroned Anchor and Hope pub, then climbing back up the steeply raked hill to the pond at the top of Springfield Park once again, before making my way back down to Stoke Newington. Here I idly wandered around some more. Retracing my former well-trodden and much familiar routes through the backstreets, passing the house where Joseph Conrad once lived on Dynevor Road when he was lodging in London between ships, and where it is said he later took inspiration for the characters of the Verloc’s in his novel, The Secret Agent (1907), from his landlord and landlady.

High Street

Back on the High Street, I was taken aback to see the road had been closed off completely. It was filled with a monstrously huge structure made from scaffolding. I later found out that back in January part of one of the old Victorian terraces of shops had collapsed into the street. Thankfully, no one was hurt at the time, but everyone living and working there has since had to be rehoused, or have had their businesses suspended, while Hackney Council attempts to shore up the building. I used to live on the High Street, just next to the Police Station – opposite the derelict Vogue Continental Cinema, and so I knew and was known by several of the shopkeepers; but here again, most of the shops and restaurants from my day have long since disappeared, as has the building in which I used to live. Looking into the whitewashed window of the launderette, where I often spent my Saturday mornings, I read a notice pinned to the door announcing its final closure in June 2022, thanking its many customers over the years. It had outlasted my patronage by twenty years. I used to love its smell of soap powder and warm-linted tumble dryers. The lady who used to run it had a comfortingly warm smile too. There was a friendly camaraderie among the many familiar faces who called the High Street home back then. I remember one time, after a power cut one evening, an old boy who came into the little supermarket next to the Methodist Church had everyone in stitches; telling everyone how he had been sitting on the toilet when the lights went out, and how for the best part of an hour he’d had to sit there with his “arse getting cold without even a cigarette lighter” to help him pass the time in reading a newspaper until the lights eventually came back on!

The Old Police Station

Looking back, those five years seemed to be filled with many magical memories such as the ones which were now coming flooding back to me. Wandering around those streets, it was a wonderfully nostalgic way to wile away an afternoon. But my connection to this place goes deeper than my five years living above a shop on the High Street. More than a hundred years ago, many of my forbears on both sides of my family lived in Stoke Newington and Green Lanes too. One of my great grandfathers worked for the Metropolitan Water Board, and my great grandmother died while they were living in Stoke Newington. I was reminded of this whilst ambling around Abney Park Cemetery. I’ve not been able to find out where she was buried, and I have always wondered if she might have a grave somewhere hereabouts. Abney Park is crammed with gravestones, each one representing the memories of numerous lives lived only to be forgotten. Reclaimed by the greenery in the sacred grove of one of London’s “magnificent seven” Victorian cemeteries. I’d often got lost in here back in the days when I called Stoke Newington home, and today was no different. Just when I realised I’d lost my bearings, my eye was caught by a name on one of the tombstones nearby. It wasn’t the name of my great grandmother, but it was a name which was familiar to me. No longer a common name today, it was shared by an old lady whom I’d known when I was young. We used to be bellringers together at the church back in the part of northwest London where I grew up. As I read the inscription on this headstone, I realised that the following day – today (20 February 2023) – would be the centenary of the death of the woman laid to rest here.

Abney Park Chapel

There are many famous people buried in Abney Park, but there are many more besides who were ordinary folk much like you and me; known only to those who knew and loved them in their day. Eleanor Rigby-like, I wondered who was this particular woman? – There was no indication of how old she was when she died, nor if she and her husband had any children, though it did record the fact that he survived her by several decades and was eventually buried with her at the age of 72. ‘Reunited’ as his inscription said. There was something about the name, the style of the leaded-lettering, and the serendipity of my happening upon her grave just one day short of a century since she’d died. I wondered if anyone might come and visit them both tomorrow, but the grave didn’t look like it had been tended in a very long time. And so, thinking about this – and about my own great grandmother who had died locally – whilst I wandered around Stoke Newington, reevoking memories of my own times gone-by living just a few streets away, I later penned a poem to this lady whom I did not know as small a centennial remembrance.

MEMENTO MORI

Her name in elegant script read – Cissie,

‘Dearly Belov’d’ of husband’s memory;
She died more than thirty years before he.
Laid to rest in Abney’s cemetery,
Where I did come upon her grave by chance;
My eye happened to catch her name askance.
Her headstone hugged on one side by a tree,
On the other, a tendril of ivy
Clung to the green-shaded slab; one among
All the many whose names are now unsung;
All except for William’s dearest one,
Whom, here today, happily I did see,
Close to the hundredth anniversary
Of her death: tomorrow as it will be.
Time’s passing, a century less one day,
This headstone assures tomorrow Cissie
Will be remembered now at least by me.
In elegant script, her memorial
Merging with Abney’s green arboreal;
‘Ici Repose’ since nineteen twenty-three,
I write this verse in remembrance of one
Who lived, was loved, and yet is now long gone:
Sadly missed, – Cecily Mary Picton,

A name unknown, and yet unforgotten.

Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington – 19^th February 2023.

Abney Park Cemetery

You can view a photo of Cissie’s headstone taken in 2007 here on Flickr.

And you can listen to a fascinating talk about the forgotten poets who are buried in Abney Park Cemetery here on Abney Park’s equally fascinating website.

Likewise, there’s a great video diary following John Rogers on one of his walks around several of the areas I’ve mentioned above, which you can watch on his YouTube Channel here. I’m a big fan of John’s rural and urban ‘psychogeographical’ videos, I highly recommend them.

Amir Dotan's Stoke Newington History Website, also highly recommended.