Adjacent areas of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, namely Fish Island, are sometimes also described as being part of Hackney Wick.

In historic times, the marshes were used extensively for grazing cattle, and there was limited occupation around the 'great house' at Hackney Wick.

It was no doubt conditions such as these which hastened the involvement of Eton College about this time to instigate their urban mission in Hackney Wick, a philanthropic and perhaps more accurately pedagogical outreach[10] shared with several other public schools.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, water mills on the Hackney Brook were adapted for the manufacturer of silk, and in particular crêpe.

In 1811, it was said that 'the works at these mills are moved by two steam engines, on an improved principle, which set in motion 30,000 spindles, besides numerous other implements of machinery used in the manufacture.

[13] For many years Hackney Wick was the location of the oil distiller Carless, Capel & Leonard, credited with introduction of the term petrol in the 1890s.

[22] Friswell eventually left Hackney Wick to work for the British Uralite Company at Higham although he was still a director there in 1893 when he wrote to H.E.

[28] Just after the second world war, Clarnico was the largest confectioner in Britain but moved further across the Lea to Waterden Road in 1955 where it survived for another 20 years.

[29][30] Eugene expanded the business into a former tar factory in White Post Lane which still carries traces of the firm's name.

Very little remains of the inter-war street pattern between the Hertford Union Canal and Eastway (the western part was then known as Gainsborough Road) or the masses of small terraced houses.

Part of the Wick was redeveloped in the 1960s to create the Greater London Council's Trowbridge Estate, which consisted of single-storey modern housing at the foot of seven 21-storey tower blocks.

The artist Rachel Whiteread made screenprints of photographs of the former Trowbridge estate which are in the Tate Collection as part of her series Demolished.

Due to its proximity to the Olympic Park, Hackney Wick received community and public realm development grants.

[36][37] Conversely, concerns have been raised over some of the local effects of the Olympic Park development, including the potential impact to the future of the century-old Manor Garden Allotments, which has inspired a vocal community campaign.

The historic Hackney Wick Stadium, well known throughout the East End for greyhound racing and speedway, became derelict in the late 1990s and closed in 2003.

In September 2012, Hackney Film Festival curated an outdoor canal-side screening of Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair's olympic sized travelogue 'Swandown', with a Q&A session at Carlton London Exhibition Space, during the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.

Hackney Wick is mentioned in an exchange of dialogue in The Ribos Operation, a 1978 episode of Doctor Who, as being a "mudpatch in the middle of nowhere" that one of the characters longs to return to.

A song titled "Hackney Wick" is featured on singer Rose Gray's debut studio album Louder, Please, released on 17 January 2025.

The victim, Thomas Briggs of 5 Clapton Square, was returning from dining with his niece in Peckham in July 1864 and was murdered on the train.

The present Hackney Wick railway station was built on the 1854 spur from the original North London Line to Stratford.

The entrance poles to the former Hackney Wick Goods and Coal Depot (a site now occupied by housing) are still to be seen beside the Kenworthy Road bridge.

[61] Hackney Wick is connected to the National Road Network, with the A12 Eastway (completed late 1990s), and East Cross Route linking the area with the Blackwall Tunnel (1960s).