Living in Stoke Newington: area guide to homes, schools and transport links
Affectionately known by locals as “Stokey”, the north London suburb of Stoke Newington is where couples say goodbye to their single lives down the A10 in Shoreditch and Dalston. They come looking for a house or a flat with a garden and plenty of open green space.
What they find is a neighbourhood that favours small independent shops — locals famously fought off a large Sainsbury’s although they lost the battle over Nando’s — plus good state primary schools, much-loved Clissold Park with its small menagerie, and in the grounds of St Paul’s Church in Stoke Newington High Street, the only solely organic farmers’ market in the country, where it is easy to lose count of the Bugaboo baby buggies.
Estate agent Hector Castro from the local branch of Hunters has been selling homes in the area for 20 years and grew up in nearby Newington Green.
“I can remember when what is now the Last Crumb Café in Church Street was a sweatshop, and when there was a gun shop in Albion Road.” How things have changed. A four-bedroom terrace house in the popular roads south of Church Street now sells for around £1.1 million.
This is the place Labour politicians Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls call home and Castro describes Stoke Newington as a bit of a media village. “I see Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw in the dry cleaners next door almost daily and many of our buyers are from the TV and film production world.”
But for Stoke Newington’s children it’s not the bright lights that beckon but the great outdoors. Abney Park, hidden away behind Church Street, is one of London’s “magnificent seven” cemeteries built by the Victorians to bury the dead of an expanding city.
In among the tombstones and crumbling memorials are Forest School workshops where children learn about nature.
At the West Reservoir Centre there is sailing, kayaking and canoeing and for the over-14s, there’s open water swimming in the reservoir. In the Victorian former pumping station, The Castle Climbing Centre has very scary-looking climbing walls for children as young as five.
On the A10, the ancient London to Cambridge Road, Stoke Newington is four miles north-east of central London with Stamford Hill to the north, Clapton to the east, Dalston to the south and Finsbury Park and Holloway to the west.
The Property Scene
Stoke Newington has a smattering of Georgian houses in Church Street and in listed Sanford Terrace overlooking Stoke Newington Green.
However, local architecture is mainly Victorian, with streets of terrace houses of varying size and styles, especially in the Northwold and Cazenove conservation area east of Stoke Newington High Street.
Many of these period properties have been divided into apartments and there are four times as many flats for sale in the area as there are houses.
Two developments of flats stand out. Gibson Gardens, on the corner of Northwold Road and Stoke Newington High Street, is a Victorian tenement with cobbled streets and a small communal garden.
Prices here range from £375,000 for a one-bedroom flat to £450,000 for a two-bedroom flat. It was the location for the video of Amy Whitehouse’s 2007 single Back to Black.
Red Square in Piano Lane is a 2001 Ballymore development of 114 live/work homes with arresting overhead gantries. Prices here range from £475,000 for a one-bedroom flat to £700,000 for a two-bedroom house.
What's new?
Most of the new homes being built in Stoke Newington itself are small developments on infill sites or conversions of former industrial buildings.
The largest nearby development is the regeneration of the Woodberry Down estate in Manor House. The estate is in the process of being knocked down and rebuilt in a joint venture between housebuilder Berkeley Group, Hackney council. Woodberry Down Community Organisation and housing association Notting Hill Genesis.
When complete in 2035 nearly 2,000 council homes will have been demolished, to be replaced by 5,500 new homes of which 41 per cent are promised to be “affordable” for social rent or shared ownership.
Many of the homes overlook the Stoke Newington reservoirs, now a nature and wildlife reserve and renamed Woodberry Wetlands. One-bedroom flats in Hartingtons overlooking the west reservoir start at £580,000, with two-bedroom flats at £807,500.
In The Nature Collection overlooking the east reservoir there is a fifth-floor studio at £865,000 and a three-bedroom flat at £850,000. The next phase, Willowbrook House, launches soon. Call 020 8023 7379.
In Stoke Newington centre, Hackney Sales, the housebuilding arm of Hackney council, is selling three four-bedroom townhouses with back gardens and roof terraces at Aikin Court in Barbould Road, which are ready to move into, priced £1.1 million. Contact 020 8012 2605.
There is a two-bedroom flat priced £649,995 remaining at Cotton Exchange, the conversion of a former clothing factory off Stoke Newington High Street into 34 flats. Contact Stone Real Estate on 020 7043 8888.
Shared-ownership and first-time buyer homes
Notting Hill Genesis housing association is responsible for the shared-ownership and social rent homes at Woodberry Down, though no shared-ownership homes are available there at the moment. Call 020 3815 2222 for more details.
There are currently no shared-ownership homes available in Stoke Newington itself.
Renting
Families often like to rent close to the popular local primary schools but there has been a crackdown on people scamming the system by renting in the catchment area of a sought-after school while owning a house elsewhere.
People renting in Stoke Newington are similar to those buying: families, City workers and media employees — but with the addition of sharers.
Staying power
Stoke Newington is a popular place to bring up families but many struggle to trade up from a flat to a three- or four-bedroom house.
Postcode
N16 is the Stoke Newington postcode which includes Stamford Hill and the reservoirs. On the area’s eastern boundary it strays into the E5 Clapton postcode.
Best roads
The roads south of Church Street are the most desirable, including Dumont Road, which has two-storey bow-fronted Victorian terrace houses; Clissold Crescent and Carysfort Road, where there are larger three-storey square bow-fronted late Victorian houses.
Up and coming
East of the A10 is generally cheaper, with buyers getting a lot more for their money in the roads south of Cazenove Road, such as Alkham Road, Kyverdale Road and Osbaldeston Road, which are gentrifying fast.
Travel
Located on the A10, Stoke Newington has no Tube station but Stoke Newington and Rectory Road Overground stations are on the Lea Valley lines. Trains to Liverpool Street take 13-19 minutes from Stoke Newington; a few minutes less from Rectory Road.
Commuter buses include the No 67 to Aldgate via Shoreditch; No 73 to Oxford Circus via Islington and Euston; No 76 to Waterloo via Moorgate and Aldwych; No 106 to Whitechapel via Hackney Town Hall; No 149 to London Bridge via Shoreditch and Liverpool Street; No 243 to Waterloo via Clerkenwell Green and the No 476 to Euston via Islington.
All stations are in Zone 2. An annual travelcard is £1,404.
Council
Hackney council is Labour controlled. Band D council tax for 2018/2019 is £1,374.67.
Lifestyle
Shops and restaurants
Stoke Newington Church Street is the neighbourhood’s beating heart. With the exception of Nando’s, JoJo Maman Bébé and Whole Foods Market almost all the shops and cafés are independent.
There is a butcher Meat N16; baker The Spence Bakery and cake shop Ooh Lou Lou Cakery; fishmonger Jaines & Son and second-hand bookshop Church Street Bookshop.
Coffee and brunch is obviously on everyone’s mind in Church Street, with artisan coffee shops and smart cafés every few yards including Caffeine London; The Good Egg; The Blue Legume; The Green Room and The Last Crumb Café.
Olive Loves Alfie sells designer clothing for babies and children, while Hub, with two boutiques, kits out their stylish parents.
Rasa N16 is an established South Indian vegetarian restaurant and Aun is a small plates Japanese restaurant. And almost from another, quieter age, Bridgewood & Neitzert are violin dealers, makers and repairers.
There are more shops and restaurants in Stoke Newington High Street, the busy A10. Sutton & Sons is the name shared by a fishmonger and also a fish and chip shop.
There is a bookshop, Stoke Newington Toys and Books; a knitting shop Knit with Attitude, plus a wide choice of restaurants including Franco Manca chain pizzeria; Fanny’s Kebabs, now with three branches; Spanish restaurant Black Pig with White Pearls; The Haberdashery for brunch and lunch; Yum Yum, a long-standing modern Thai restaurant in a fine Georgian house, and Itto, which describes itself as Asian fusion.
Open space
Clissold Park is the local park; at its heart is a grand mansion, Clissold House, with a café and rooms to hire for weddings and private events. The park has a playground, paddling pool, tennis courts, aviary, small menagerie and an organic food-growing project.
Abney Park is a Victorian cemetery now a nature reserve popular with dog walkers and joggers.
The Stoke Newington reservoirs are now known as the Woodberry Wetlands and were opened by Sir David Attenborough in 2016 when the East Reservoir was open to the public for the first time.
The West Reservoir Centre offers sailing, kayaking and canoeing and open water swimming, and the Castle Climbing Centre is in the former Victorian Gothic pumping station.
Leisure and the arts
Clissold Leisure Centre in Clissold Road is the local council-owned swimming pool. The Old Church in Church Street, the only surviving Elizabethan church in London, is now the local arts and performance space.
Schools
Stoke Newington’s state primary schools include three Jewish ones serving Stamford Hill’s Orthodox Jewish community, and there are also many local private Jewish schools.
Primary school
The state primary schools rated “outstanding”by Ofsted are: William Patten in Stoke Newington Church Street; The Olive School in Cazenove Road; Jubilee in Filey Avenue, and Grazebrook in Lordship Road.
Comprehensive
There are three “outstanding” comprehensive schools: Our Lady’s RC (girls, ages 11 to 18) in Amhurst Park; Mossbourne Community Academy (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Downs Park Road and Clapton Girls’ Academy (ages 11 to 18) in Laura Place.
The following are judged to be “good”: Petchey Academy (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Shacklewell Lane; Skinners’ Academy (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Woodberry Grove; and Lubavitch Senior Girls’ School (ages 11 to 18) in Stamford Hill, a small Orthodox Jewish state comprehensive.