Hackney: Where to drink and what to see

By Phil Mellows and Kate Simon

Hackney has lost more than its fair share of interesting beer venues in the past year or two but, amongst the rubble, green shoots have sprung forth, and there’s plenty to explore along and around the London borough’s Mare Street spine.

Strolling up from the south, the Five Points Taproom & Courtyard is a good place to start. Hackney’s local brewery offers relaxed spaces indoors and out to enjoy seasonal specials such as the legendary Derailed Porter and green hop brews alongside its acclaimed core range including Best and XPA, all within touching distance of where they’re brewed. If you’re feeling peckish there’s a tempting barbecue, and if you want to learn more about the beer you can book a brewery tour and tasting.

Is it a gallery, is it a theatre, is it a bar? The Victor Wynd Museum, by the Regents Canal, is all these things. The home of The Last Tuesday Society is “dedicated to subverting life, the universe and everything” in its quest to “create a new world filled with beauty, wonder and the imagination”. Expect to find an eccentric collection of exhibits, from taxidermy specimens to a lock of Elvis’s hair, events such as an illustrated talk on Undertakers and Death, and some fine examples of absinthe.

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Housed in a hollowed-out former council office block, Mare Street Market is a bright and airy open-plan space that brings together shops, restaurants, takeaways and an island bar at its hub pouring beers from 10 taps featuring beers such as Five Points XPA, Verdant Light Bulb and Stone & Wood’s Australian Pacific Ale, now brewed in the UK. Make your choice and take a seat anywhere including a leafy outside terrace that runs down one side.

London Fields Brewery led a troubled life before it closed in 2021, but now the site under the railway arches has been resurrected in a grungy but good way by pub company Grace Land in the shape of Saint Monday Brewery. The bar has been moved to the middle, in front of the brewing tanks, and has 14 craft lines, half of them brewed on site, mostly IPAs, and the other half collabs and guests featuring, on our latest visit, Nottingham’s Black Iris.

Newcomers are always surprised by Hackney’s generous gulps of green space. Nearby London Fields is just one example. Originally common land, it’s now a pleasant place to stretch out on the grass on a sunny day – perhaps with a (pricey) picnic from adjacent Broadway Market if you chance by on a Saturday, when the street is lined with stalls of produce and street food that will satisfy gourmet tastes. Pack your swimmers – at the other end of the park you can take a dip in the Olympic-sized, 1930s lido.

After you’ve dried off and dressed, keep walking up Greenwood Road and look out for the unimposing Binch on your left. Owned by a Frenchman with a taste for craft beer, this neighbourhood bar combines, in a very small space, half-a-dozen extremely well-chosen draught brews from the likes of Orbit, Donzoko and The Kernel with a wall lined with finewines from France. It’s a proper little bolt hole away from the hubbub of Hackney Central and you can snack on a posh toasted sandwich, too.

From here, continue past Hackney Downs Station to the Pembury Tavern. A Victorian pub that was sensitively restored and brought to vibrant life by Five Points in 2018, it’s simply one of the nicest places to sit down for a beer with friends or family and share an award-winning pizza. It also serves some of the area’s best-kept cask ales – Five Points Best, Pale and Railway Porter are always on – and an interesting choice of craft, too, including guests.

Then swing round to Central for the Cock Tavern, Hackney’s famous rustic bare-boards ale house with always a great line-up of cask beers from across the country and a similar number of ‘real’ ciders. Howling Hops Brewery was founded in the basement here before moving to more spacious accommodation at Hackney Wick, and it retains a share in the business - so expect to find a good choice of its beers on the pumps and taps. Pickled eggs are a big thing here, and you can bring in a takeaway if you want something less eggy.

Mare Street’s newest pub, opening in March this year, is the Empire Tavern, next door to the theatre of the same name. While there’s a shiny retro American diner feel to the décor and burgers on the menu, it showcases cask beers from Walthamstow’s East London Brewing, which operates the place in a joint venture. The mezzanine above the long bar doubles as an events space and there’s a couple of shelves of vinyl to spin for sounds.

There’s a mini-trail of art and architecture to follow around Hackney Central beginning with “Warm Shores” by Thomas J Price, two larger-than-life bronze figures that honour the Windrush generation. They stand in the shadow of Frank Matcham’s ornate Edwardian music hall, the Hackney Empire, where everyone from Charlie Chaplin to the Rolling Stones has trod the boards. Over on The Narroway, you’ll find a second tribute to Hackney’s Caribbean community, three giant representations of fruit from the islands – Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moracae) and Soursop (Annonaceae) – by the Turner Prize-winning sculptor Veronica Ryan. Over them looms medieval St Augustine’s Tower, which stands sentry to the historic heart of this neighbourhood. Pass through the old graveyard to its rear to find Sutton House, one of the last remaining Tudor mansions in London.

And if you fancy one last beer, you’re now practically next door to the Chesham Arms, a charming community-owned local with a great range of beers, cask and craft, and a surprise garden out the back.

Photo courtesy Five Points Brewery

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