At 195 Mare St

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195 Mare St

I remember the moment I first caught a glimpse of 195 Mare St through the steamed-up window on the top deck of a bus going up to Hackney one rainy day years ago. In a split second it had passed, an astonishing vision of grand seventeenth century country mansion, marooned amidst the ramshackle urban accretions of subsequent centuries. Had I imagined it or was it real?

How frustrated I was to discover it was indeed real, a Dutch City merchant’s house of 1697, yet mired in long-standing disputes that rendered it unreachable in recent years. How delighted I am to report to you that – unlike too many heritage battles of recent years – this story has a positive outcome, thanks to the astonishing tenacity and perseverance of a local couple who managed to prise the house away from developers, buying it as their family home to repair it sympathetically and open the lower floors as a community arts space.

After all these years, what a joy it was to visit at last and photograph this extraordinary house just at the moment when its new life begins. Twenty-first century Hackney dissolves as you step over the threshhold of 195 Mare St. Note the curiously-abstracted seventeenth century woodgraining in the hallway and experience the sense of elevation imparted by these lofty reception rooms where the intangible past still lingers, before you descend to the warren of kitchens below. In these low-ceilinged rooms, the presence of the past grows more vivid, evoked by the astonishing survival of so many original fixtures and fittings, and dense layers of patina evidencing centuries of hard work down here, below stairs.

At the head of the stairs, a warden’s booth remains with just enough room for a person to sleep, whilst keeping an eye on the nocturnal activities of the ex-prisoners in the dormitories that filled the top floor when this was the Elizabeth Fry Women’s Refuge. A rumour lingers that there were once shackles attached to wall in one of the windowless basement rooms, where ‘miscreants’ were punished.

As I walked through the house and learnt of its mixed history, I recognised a longing to see the gardens replanted front and back, and growing up to maturity with trees and hedges to enfold it as a benign haven where life can flourish anew.

195 Mare Street was built in 1697 for Abraham Dolins, a wealthy merchant from Holland, as a grand country retreat from the City of London. Paintings by mayor European artists, including Rembrandt and van Dyck, were displayed in the house, and generations of Dolins lived here until 1800. Later it was owned by Thomas Wilson, Tory MP for the City of London, who was a supporter of the slave trade and argued for reparations for slave owners.

In 1860, the house was sold to the Elizabeth Fry Society and became the Elizabeth Fry Refuge for female ex-prisoners, with thousands of women and girls passing through after serving short prison sentences.

In the twentieth century, the house became the New Lansdowne Working Men’s Club and an important part of Hackney’s social life until it closed in 2004 and the house was abandoned before being squatted and then sold to a local developer for office space.

On the summer afternoon of my visit, there was just me and the new owner alone in the empty rooms. Yet the house was crowded with people – parties of avaricious City merchants, congregations of ‘fallen’ women struggled to regain their lives, hordes of working men of Hackney enjoying a night out, gangs of squatters shivering through the long winters, and crowds of other folk, indiscernible.

Click here to learn about visiting times at 195 Mare St between 8th -18th September as part of the Open House festival