Success in the making

Ten things we bet you didn’t know about Hackney…

1. The first bomb of the First World War dropped on Britain fell in Hackney, in the garden of the Nevill Arms pub.

2. Fassett Square, E8, is the inspiration for Albert Square, the home of the BBC soap EastEnders

3. There are more than 1,300 listed buildings in Hackney. The oldest of which is St Augustine’s Tower, built in the early 16th Century, which stands today just off the southern end of the Narrow Way.

4. Hackney Marshes has the highest concentration of football pitches (73 at the last count) in Europe.

5. The oldest bicycle club in the world started in Hackney in 1870. The Pickwick Bicycle Club was named as a tribute to Charles Dickens and today still counts two of the great author’s great grandsons among its members.

6. Jimmy Choo, purveyor of designer shoes and handbags, learned the tools of his trade in Hackney.

7. Hackney has three parks and gardens of Special Historic Interest, according to English Heritage: Abney Park Cemetery, Clissold Park and Springfield Park

8. Nobel Prize winning author and playwright Harold Pinter was born in Hackney, on 10 October 1930.

9. Hackney Wick is home to the largest number of artists and studio spaces per square metre in the world.

10. Over a hundred years before the Eden Project was even conceived, Hackney was the site of the world’s largest hothouse, the Loddiges Nursery, an veritable indoor rainforest that supported palm and banana trees, hummingbirds and a thousand different species of rose.