Hackney was an administrative unit with consistent boundaries from the early Middle Ages to the creation of the larger modern borough in 1965.

This proved unpopular, especially in more affluent Stoke Newington, and after four unsuccessful attempts, the two parishes regained their independence when they were separated by mutual consent under the Metropolis Management (Plumstead and Hackney) Act of 1893.

[6] The London Government Act 1899 converted the parishes into Metropolitan Boroughs based on the same boundaries, sometimes with minor rationalisations.

There will have been a network of probably minor, local roads in Hackney before the Romans conquered southern Britain after 43AD, but the area's proximity to the provincial capital, Londinium, meant that it was soon crossed by two large long-distance routes.

Later, the Middle and East Saxon area would become subject to various other Kingdoms, last among them Wessex, which sought to unite England and roll back the partial Viking conquest of the country.

[15] The Domesday Book of 1086 covered England at manorial level, so Hackney is only assessed as part of Manor of Stepney, of which it was a sub-manor.

The landscape at this time was largely agricultural, Domesday returns for Middlesex indicate that it was around 30% wooded (much of it wood-pasture), about double the English average.

A number of royal courtiers lived in Homerton, while Henry VIII had a palace at Brooke House, Upper Clapton, where Queen Mary took the Oath of Supremacy.

In 1727 Daniel Defoe said of the hamlets of Hackney All these, except the Wyck-house, are within a few years so encreas'd in buildings, and so fully inhabited, that there is no comparison to be made between their present and past state: Every separate hamlet is encreas'd, and some of them more than treble as big as formerly; Indeed as this whole town is included in the bills of mortality, tho' no where joining to London, it is in some respects to be call'd a part of it.In the 1770s Hackney became home to one of the largest and most celebrated plant nurseries in England, Loddiges Paradise Field Nursery, founded by German born Joachim Conrad Loddiges (1738–1826) and continued by his son George Loddiges (1786–1846), and known as The Hackney Botanic Nursery Garden.

With its range of heated glasshouses the nursery was famed for displaying newly discovered plants from around the globe including the Americas, the Caribbean, Australia and the far East.

[19] The growth of the East End of London was stimulated by the building of Regent's Canal between 1812 and 1816, with construction work on a new town at De Beauvoir beginning in 1823 and continuing through the 1830s.

The arrival of the railways, around 1850, accelerated the spread of London and the expansion of the existing nuclei so that Hackney was almost entirely built up by 1870.

In 1907, the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party held at the Brotherhood Church on the east side of Southgate Road.

[20] The first bomb of the first air raid on London, fell on 16 Alkham Road, West Hackney, in May 1915 by the German Army airship LZ 38.

[26] Notable buildings destroyed by bombing included Tudor-era Brooke House[27] in Upper Clapton and West Hackney church.

During the 1930s, 1940s[28][29] and 1960s[30][31] the area's large Jewish and other minority populations made it a target for provocative rallies by Oswald Mosley and the far-right organisations he founded.

These were actively opposed by many local people, together with organisations such as the 43 Group and this led to a number of violent confrontations, notably in the Ridley Road area of Dalston.

The western boundary is based on the N–S axis of the Roman A10, though the sub-district of De Beauvoir Town lies beyond it, as do small areas of Dalston and Stamford Hill.

The Lea and Hackney Marshes are underlain by alluvium soils, and the higher ground between Homerton and Stamford Hill is formed on a widening bed of London Clay.

Brickearth deposits are within tongues of clay extending beneath Clapton Common, Stamford Hill and Stoke Newington High Street.

It closed on 1 December 1870 and was replaced the same day by a station to the west of Mare Street, designed by Edwin Henry Horne and also named Hackney.

However, when Hackney Central re-opened in 1985, the footway was not reinstated and passengers transferring between the two stations were obliged to leave one and walk along the street to the other until the link was rebuilt.

[38] Hackney Wick opened on 12 May 1980[39] by British Rail on the re-routed line which bypassed the site of the former Victoria Park station as part of the Crosstown Linkline.