Hackney,
lying to the north-east of London, was a very fashionable place in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and many notable personages resided
there. By the early eighteenth century Hackney was the resort for many
wealthy citizens; a 1761 report stated there near a hundred coaches
kept in the village. By 1790 the population was approximately 1900 persons.
By
the late eighteenth century the village (too populous then to have any
sense of the rural) consisted of four streets: church Street, Mare (or
Mere) Street, Grove Street and Well Street.
Hackney
church was rebuilt in the late eighteenth century.