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Straight to the Point Hackney Museum
Spectre at the Feast  
Musical Meanderings
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New Kids on the Block
Ingrid Ricciardello
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Crime Wave
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Word on the Street
The Clapton Messiah
Surfing N16
Good Bar Guide
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Garden Colour
The North Bank
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With its proliferation of bars, restaurants and bijou shops, Church Street is now regarded as one of North London's trendiest streets and the epicentre of a well-heeled, middle class invasion of Stoke Newington. However, it was not always thus.

John Emms, owner of John's Garden Centre and Joanne's Plantique, has run businesses on the street for almost forty years. Although not the longest continuously operated retail outlet on Church Street - that honour belongs to Rosa's lingerie shop opposite the Bar Lorca - John's businesses have stood well the test of time in an area which has seen significant changes over the years.

An Essex man, he moved here in 1963 at the age of 18 and set up a greengrocer's shop at number 175. At the time, there were only two cafes on the street (the Park Cafe stood on what is now Ryan's Bar) and no restaurants, although there was a fish and chip shop. John remembers the Stoke Newington of the 1960s as a friendly, predominantly working-class neighbourhood with a low crime rate. Entertainment was provided by the several pubs on the street, the cinemas and restaurants on the High Street and the regular dances at the Assembly Rooms, while more illicit thrills came from the gambling den where the Chinese restaurant now is and the raucous downstairs drinking club at what is now the Barracuda. Such organised villainy as existed centred on the Kray Twins' Regency Club on Amhurst Road.

With the absorption of Stoke Newington into Hackney in 1965, John reckons the area went downhill. Hackney shut down the flats at the back of the Town Hall (from where most of John's customers came) for renovation and the area became rougher, with many of the local shops closing. Trade dropped away, not helped by the rise of the out-of-town shopping centres. John's greengrocer gradually metamorphosed into a cafe, before becoming a garden centre. Business, however, began to pick up during the early 1980s with the arrival of Fox's Wine Bar heralding a new, middle class direction for Church Street. With the exception of the recession of the late 1980s, since then business has thrived on the street, as a cursory glance will reveal today.

What are the main differences between the 1960s and now? Back then John relied almost exclusively on passing trade while today this is mostly non-existent, with most of his business coming over the phone. Linked to this has been the decline in local employment. While trade used to be fairly constant, now the bulk of his sales occur at weekends, and in particular Sundays, as many of the residents commute into central London for work. With the evangelical zeal one would expect from the vice-chairman of the Church Street Business Association, John argues that what is needed are more businesses based in the area - for instance, placing offices above shops - in an attempt to turn it back into a daytime shopping street.

What would also help the local economy would be the easing of parking restrictions and the provision of paid-for, short-term parking during the day, which would attract shoppers from outside the area. Many traders feel that the difficulty in finding parking around Church Street is a real problem, and John shares this view.
What most concerns John, however, is the potential impact of a recession on local businesses. Many of the traders operate on slender margins and he believes that, if these disappear, the whole area would return to the bad old days of the 1970s. The local economy is on a knife-edge and, in the event of a financial turndown, it would collapse.

Let's hope that doesn't happen. However, if it does, this single-minded, resourceful businessman would almost certainly survive, given the durability of his track record on Church Street.

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