Hackney

HACKNEY: work-in-progress

Number 195 Mare Street is one of the oldest and most intact Grade II* Listed country houses in Hackney and a significant landmark within the local community. 

It was built for a Dutch merchant in 1697 and remained in the same family for its first 100 years. In 1860 it became the Elizabeth Fry Refuge for the Reformation of Women Prisoners, until sold in 1913 to the Landsdowne Liberal and Radical Club to become a working men’s club, with a new concert hall in the rear garden. During World War II it was the base for the Home Guard. The Club sold up in 2004, after which the house was squatted and then owned by developers until it was bought by our clients.

BACK GARDEN

With an unusually large amount of external space for central London, the house is hemmed in on all sides by new buildings which make the west-facing rear garden extremely overlooked. 

In response, Lynch Architects, who designed the renovation of the house, created a series of new 2.4m tall garden walls to form a large square terrace to mirror the square plan of the house, plus two intimate outside rooms. Behind these a small urban woodland, planted in spring 2023 as the first phase of the soft landscaping, provides essential privacy at high level and helps reduce summer temperatures. All trees have been selected for their heat and drought-tolerance.

FRONT GARDEN

The plant palette for the cooler east-facing front garden is informed by local history. From the 1770s to 1850, a few hundred metres up the road, there existed the Hackney Botanic Nursery Garden, one of London's most celebrated nurseries and arboretums at the time, run by Conrad Loddiges & Sons. It was demolished for housing in the late 19th century, but to honour this legacy trees for the front garden have largely been selected from the Loddigues catalogue, many illustrated in the twenty volumes of The Botanical Cabinet they published between 1818 and 1833.

This garden will become public when the lower-ground floor of the house opens as a community arts centre. Completion expected late 2026.