Downs are areas of low grassed hills and here in Hackney in one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods of London is an expansive area where there is peace and quiet with only the occasional clanking of building machinery from the work at the side of the downs where apartment blocks are rising.
They will be sold at premium prices because of their central location – so near to the city as well as their views over the open grassland.
They contrast with the enormous Victorian houses around here, built when this was a prosperous and genteel suburb.
Over the years, the trees have grown and spread, up and over the villas that once contained three or four storeys for affluent families with a basement flat below for servants and attics atop for their children’s nurseries.
Many of these houses were later divided into flats and fell into disrepair, crumbling amongst the squalor and hopelessness of poverty and society’s ills. And still the trees continued to expand the girths of their trunks and the reach of their branches around the houses and over the downs.
The open land has been preserved. Unlike Stoke Newington Common, cut in half by the railway line, the trains cross the downs underneath through a tunnel.
Although campaigning over the years has not always been by peaceful means - a century and half ago, 25,000 people came here, tore down fences and built an enormous bonfire.
One of the main paths is lined with trees - Grey Poplars, with light coloured trunks. Each appears to be several trees, growing pressed together and blending so that their trunks become strangely shaped.
Tree trunks of grey poplars
According to local records, paths were laid when the downs began to be regarded as a park.
But older maps show us that those paths follow the same pattern as the ones that were there long before – including two that form a diagonal cross. So people are following those well established routes of people from long ago who crossed this open land and took short cuts.
Parks that are designed by planners have a certain regularity, with a flower bed here and a band stand there. But Hackney Downs retains its integrity as an ancient space, albeit with some modern park facilities that are over to one side.
Grasslands are replete with clover, buttercups and daisies. There are paths mowed through them leading to apple trees and blackberries to pick and forage later in the year.
Apple trees
There were April showers when I visited. I stood under the trees, and used the canopy as a giant umbrella.
Tree brolly
From here I could see that Hackney Downs is spread across a huge mound. The word 'Hackney' is believed to come from old English words for 'raised place'.
And they are compensated by the presence of the wildlife meadows and the logs that are left to provide a save haven for insects to improve the bio diversity of the downs, appearing to have been abandoned randomly here and there and resembling an elephants’ graveyard – but with a promise of a healthy future for Hackney Downs
Hackney Downs or Hackney Central stations
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