Churches, trees and wild flowers – all on a walk in Hackney

Discover a different side to north east London, as David Harrison from Footways guides us along the glorious Green Link Walk from Hackney to Islington

On a Monday evening in May, following a semi-tropical storm, the late evening sun arrived to illuminate a group gathered outside St John’s Church in Hackney. They were waiting to start a walk along a section of the Green Link Walk, organised by Footways and CPRE London as part of the Urban Tree Festival.

Launched in 2024, this walk is the most recent addition to TfL’s Walk London Network. It joins such long-established trails as the London Loop, the Capital Ring and the Thames Path. The Green Link radiates out from the city centre, linking almost 40 green spaces and stretches 15 miles from Peckham to Epping Forest.

Opportunities for greening

On this particular evening, I led the walk with London Tree Ring Director Phil Paulo. We told walkers a little about how the Green Link came about and something of the history you can explore as you go along. But we also wanted to look for opportunities for greening the route, as part of the London Tree Ring project, and to learn about its trees.

The Hackney section of the walk, which we were exploring, runs from the River Lea to Southgate Road. You begin with a picturesque view of the river and leave it by Northchurch Road with its evocative paired villas and trees. Entering Islington, you pass through Canonbury’s streets of stuccoed terraces with Tuscan columns. Our evening walk ended at the Earl of Essex near the Regent’s canal.

Walk highlights

There is so much to see on along this stretch of the Green Link. Highlights along the route included:

• the surviving tower of the medieval parish church in Hackney
• the 18th century houses of Sutton Place, built for well-off Londoners when Hackney was a village separated from the City by fields
• London Fields with its wild flowers
• the palm trees and Italianate houses of Albion Square
• De Beauvoir Square with its Tudor style 19th houses
• Northchurch Road where the trees have been built in the road not the pavement – absolutely the right thing to do
• the new pedestrian and cycle crossing on Southgate Road with rain gardens
• planters with flowering plants and a bench which have replaced guard rails outside Rotherfield school.

Beautiful map

A digital version of the walk has been available since its launch, but now Footways has produced a beautiful, hard copy. Unlike many difficult to handle large maps, this one is wonderfully compact. It fits into your pocket.

You can fold one bit of the route at a time, like turning a page. Or you can hold it out like an ancient scroll and pore over its trademark vibrant pink routes and charming illustrations. For a bonus, there are write-ups of some places of interest, which even locals may not have noticed.

Pick up a free copy of the map from the Hackney Library, the Museum of the Order of St John, London Archives or the church of St Bartholomew the Great.

Learn more about the London Tree Ring Project, here

Find out more about Footways, here