Sue Doe's Women from Hackney's History Walks Start

Our guide Sue Doe has contributed to a new book called Women from Hackney’s History which was published by The Hackney Society on 8 March 2021, International Women’s Day. Now that walks on the streets are allowed - with the necessary measures to make them Covid-safe - Sue is starting a series of walks in the Borough about women featured in the book. The first two walks cover women associated with the Dalston and Hackney Central areas respectively. You can find details and book them on our Walks page.

The book contains profiles of over one hundred individual women who were born, lived, worked or died in Hackney. Some are well known. Others decidedly less so.  But they all deserve recognition. Their stories cover five centuries and show us how times have changed for women and for Hackney. Click here or on the image below for a video clip giving a wonderful glimpse of what to expect from the book.

If you are interested in buying the book, go to the Hackney Society Website.

Sue, who was herself born and bred in Hackney, has developed the walks to cover different areas of the Borough. As well as women featured in the book, the walks will cover women who are new discoveries, those that didn’t quite make the criteria and those we simply don’t know enough about.

Provisional details of all the walks in the series are listed below. Further details of each walk will be advertised once a date for it has been set. If you would like to register interest in going on any of the walks for which there is no date yet, please contact Sue direct at sue.doe@hotmail.co.uk and she will let you know as soon as dates and times are fixed. All walks will begin and end at a station. There may be some overlap between walks, but this will be minimal.

Hackney Central route one: Start at London Fields Overground and finish at Hackney Central Overground. Includes - strike leader; explorer; artist; Indian nanny; nuns; campaigner; Mary Queen of Scots’ mother-in-law.

Hackney Central route two: Start and finish at Hackney Central Overground. Includes – the ‘mother of feminism’; blackmailer; shopkeeper; slave owner; teachers; mathematician; the Winter queen; aeronaut.

Clapton: Start at Clapton Overground and finish at Hackney Central Overground. Includes – suffragettes; musician; prodigy; doctor; murderer; writer; actress; Tudor and Stuart nobility and royalty.

Dalston: Start and finish at Dalston Junction Overground. Includes – a murderer; club owner; cinema owner; musician; the Queen of the music hall; pacifist; agony aunt; squatters; anti-fascist fighters.

Hoxton: Start at Haggerston Overground and finish at Hoxton Overground. Includes – actress; film director; writer; the woman who escaped the Krays; politicians; campaigning journalist.

Shoreditch: Start at Moorgate Underground and finish at Old Street Underground. Includes – shoplifter; furniture designers; entrepreneurs; brothel madam; engineer; nuns.

Stoke Newington: Start and finish at Stoke Newington Overground. Includes – writers; schoolmistresses; actresses; politicians; suffragettes; menagerie owner.