From Pillar to Post: recording Hackney’s most vulnerable historic street furniture

Following the success of its limited participatory project in October 2025 to record four historic drinking troughs in order to nominate them for local listing by Hackney Council, the Buildings at Risk Group is running a larger project, called ‘From Pillar to Post’, on similar lines in late 2026.

The project will kick off with a free introductory training and recording event in the Dorothy Thurtle Garden immediately south of the Britannia Leisure Centre in Shoreditch Park (junction of Pitfield Street and Mintern Street),  on Sunday 25th October from 2pm. There’s the option of a short guided walk through Hoxton afterwards to put into practice things learnt during the intro session.

Not only will this project give anyone the chance to help improve understanding and awareness of some easily-missed bits of Hackney’s historic built environment, in the process it also will invite participants to contemplate what makes a positive contribution to Hackney’s public spaces. From street trees to listed telephone kiosks, our borough’s streets are full of features of interest. This project hopes to shine a light on things that have been overlooked and in many cases removed for no good reason, so that they can be recognised, celebrated and safeguarded from loss in the future.

Background

The project gets its name from its subject matter: gun posts (what nowadays we tend to call bollards), and the assortment of other historic posts, pillars and stones that once marked the boundaries of parishes or properties. They can be found all over the borough, more in some places than others (Shoreditch and Hoxton having particular concentrations of gun posts). Some have been features of Hackney’s streetscapes for more than 200 years! Whether they still serve their original purposes or have been made obsolete by change, they add interest and character to the streets and paths by which they stand. If only in a minor way, Hackney has a better, more enriched built environment thanks to their presence.

A sizeable number are Grade II listed and so are entered in the National Heritage List for England (NHLE), making them designated heritage assets in planning speak. Others are locally listed, affording them formal recognition though not nearly the same level of legal protection. But many more examples, often of equal age and quality to their listed counterparts, lack any form of heritage protection or recognition. As a result they are more vulnerable to being removed without being recognised for what they are and what they contribute to our public realm.

To date, 18 separate losses of Grade II listed posts have been noted across the borough (in fact, the number of actual posts is even greater as some listings cover multiple posts). This is without counting locally listed equivalents, or ones that never made it onto any list. Some disappeared in the 1970s, others within the past few years. Taken together, that’s a substantial loss of heritage — not to mention a substantial number of contraventions of planning law from the unauthorised removal of designated heritage assets.

Project overview and aims

From Pillar to Post will be based around an online map to which new information and photos will be added as the project progresses. A small number of free events will be held to offer hands-on training in how to find and record the features in question. Behind the scenes, there will be multi-stakeholder meetings and the generation of datasets for professional use and public information.

The aims of the project are:

• Map, photograph and record to a set standard key information about all recognised non-listed historic gun posts/bollards and boundary marker posts/stones in the borough of Hackney.

• Identify examples of posts/pillars/stones most worthy of local listing and complete nominations for them to submit to Hackney Council.

• Visit, photograph and record information about the presence or absence of all nationally and locally listed posts, pillars and stones.

• Add photographs and relevant new information to online NHLE entries as part of Historic England’s ‘Enrich The List’ initiative.

• Create a typology by which ambiguous older posts (e.g. ones reset lower in the ground, painted) might be positively identified as 19th-century gun posts.

• Arrange and lead meeting with representatives from Hackney Council and Historic England to discuss the issue of so many missing designated heritage assets, and whether some might be languishing in depots and so can be rescued and re-erected.

• Create spatial datasets and other assets to share with Hackney Council, for internal use and sharing with its contractors and subcontractors, so all are aware of the locations of these features and the value local people attach to them.

• Encourage consideration and discussions about what contributes positively to Hackney’s public realm, and what other historic elements might be the subjects of future recording and local listing nomination projects.

Further information

We will be setting up a project page on the Hackney Society website shortly, which will be update once further content (above all, the online map) has been created. In the meantime, questions and offers of help can be emailed to the project lead, Rob Briggs, buildingsatrisk@hackneysociety.org.