Continuing our series on London's local history museums.
Two very different exhibits draw the eye as you walk into Hackney Museum. The first is a "confusing map" that stood at Dalston Junction for half a century. The second is an Anglo-Saxon log boat dug up in Springfield Park.
This historical odd couple are representative of a local history museum that celebrates the variety and diversity of the borough at every turn. That ethos is particularly strong when it comes to Hackney's celebrated multiculturalism. Here, we find Weinberg’s printing press, which specialised in printing in Yiddish in the early 20th century. There, we spot a collection of cow and goat horns, brought to Hackney from Sierra Leone.
Hackney's ever-changing communities are best represented by the fascia and fittings of F. Cooke and Sons, a traditional eel, pie and mash shop at 41 Kingsland High Street for most of the 20th century. The shop closed in 1997, to be replaced by the Shanghai Chinese restaurant. That, too, is now closed, and both signs hang beside one another in the museum.
In many ways, this is a fairly typical local history museum, with a strong emphasis on immigration, community, housing and education. But it also feels more modern and structured than some other small museums. The inclusion of regularly changing exhibitions also helps to keep things fresh.
I was surprised to find the original tombstone of Daniel Defoe. I'd assumed his memorial in Bunhill Fields was an original, but it was only erected in 1870, 140 years after his death. Defoe was schooled in Stoke Newington, not far from where the museum's oldest exhibit was discovered. This is a flint hand axe, lost by a hunter-gatherer some 200,000 years ago. The history of Hackney is long indeed.
Hackney Museum is at Hackney Library (aptly addressed as 1 Reading Lane... but right next to the Town Hall). Entrance is free, and it's open Tue-Sat.
