A Stroll Around Haggerston in 1986 – 1993

In 1986, Haggerston in the East London borough of Hackney had not yet been discovered by trust fund kids who have spilled into the area from gentrified Hoxton and Shoreditch. It’s an ancient place, first recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as Hergotestane. On an 1745 map of Hackney, it is shown as Agostone, but by the 19th century it had become Haggerstone. When the railways arrived, the place began its rapid change from pasture to brick. Peter Marhsall was there in the summer of 1986, taking pictures of Haggerston as he strolled about.

Elsewhere in England that summer, Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey, estate agent Suzy Lamplugh vanished after a viewing in London in crime that remains unsolved, worked began on the Channel Tunnel linking England to France, Australian soap opera Neighbours began its long run on daytime TV, the M25, that Road to Hell, opened, police searched for victims of the so-called Moors Murders, there was a “Big Bang” in the City of London when the London Stock Exchange went computerised and opened to foreign companies, Wham! played a farewell concert at Wembley Stadium, and on the radio Chris de Burgh was crooning about The Lady in Red.

 

The Black Bull pub closed in the 1980s and was demolished in 1994. Situated at 217 Haggerston Road, London E8, the site is now occupied by a block of flats.

 

The Stag was in one of the railway arches on Geffrye St, which runs along the back of the Geffrye Museum [now Museum of the Home]. The railway here was a part of the line into Broad St from Dalston Junction which closed the month I took this picture. It is now the location of Hoxton station on the London Overground.

This was a Triumph Stag workshop and claimed to be ‘The longest established Stag specialist’. The luxury sports car was sold from 1970-78 and the workshop probably had plenty of business as some questionable design features led to many problems with its engine, exacerbated in some cases by poor quality control and industrial unrest at the castings factory.