culture
Hackney's Historic Plant and Textile Legacy Illuminated in Electric Bloom
A 2015 light installation at St John at Hackney church drew residents into the borough's earlier role as a hub for exotic plants and fabric workshops.
How we reported this
Hackney residents walked a nighttime trail of projected artworks on 12 September 2015 that marked the area's earlier standing as a centre for both plant nurseries and textile production.
Workshops feed into public installations
The Electric Bloom project grew out of six months of local workshops organised by creative studio SDNA with backing from Hackney Council. Participants examined how the borough once hosted the largest botanical hothouse in the world and later became home to hundreds of textile factories. The evening trail began at St John at Hackney church and moved through nearby heritage sites, where people listened to audio stories that connected the past to present-day Hackney.
Illustrations of palm leaves by Anna Glover were projected permanently onto Churchwell Path. On Morning Lane, animated versions of seventeenth-century-style intaglio prints by Bryan Poole appeared on building surfaces. Inside the church itself, digital pieces invited visitors to consider the same themes of growth and making.
Nursery trade gives way to factory work
The Loddiges family ran a specialist plant nursery just north of St Thomas’s Square off Mare Street during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The site introduced several exotic species to European gardens, including rhubarb, the Common Mauve Rhododendron and the Lotus. A large hothouse kept tropical conditions so these plants could survive in Hackney Central. The nursery closed in the 1850s.
Textile activity then expanded across the same streets. By 1900 the borough contained hundreds of factories and workshops that together employed over 15,000 people, according to the Hackney Citizen report on the project. The Electric Bloom trail used light and sound to remind residents of this layered local story.
Similar community-led trails have continued in later years around the same church and lanes, giving new generations a way to trace how Hackney’s green and industrial past still shapes open spaces and creative projects today. Residents can check the Hackney Council events listings for upcoming walks that follow the same routes.