Dalston, E8

Dalston is a district in the London Borough of Hackney, England. Its historical borders are Kingsland Road and Kingsland High Street in the west, London Fields in the east, Downs Park Road in the north and the Shoreditch parish boundary in the south. Its main shopping street, Kingsland High Street, follows the route of the Roman Ermine Street, and has the road number A10.

Modern Dalston is often seen as the area surrounding both sides of Kingsland High Street, even though some of the west side is within the London Borough of Islington. As such, it bestrides the main route north from the City of London.

The last survivor of Dalston's 20th-century entertainment boom is the justly celebrated Rio Cinema, one of the very few cinemas left in East London and, indeed, one of the few independent cinemas left in London. Besides its regular programmes of popular and art movies, the Rio also features film festivals and children's matinees.

Dalston is not a glamorous shopping centre but it has become legendary in northeast London, mostly thanks to its excellent Ridley Road street market. The keyphrase here is 'value for money' and for food shopping it is hard to better this area. Fruit and vegetables, some fairly exotic, are available at low prices, and the local halal butchers, clustered around the high street end of the market, are hard to beat in terms of quality and price. The Kingsland Shopping Centre mall (formerly Dalston Cross) is a useful, if drab, supplement to the main market street.

Contemporary Dalston is a lively neighbourhood with an ethnically varied population. Architecturally it is a mixture of 18th and 19th century terraced houses and 20th century council estates. It is currently undergoing rapid gentrification, partly because of the planned construction of a new railway station at Dalston Junction, part of the extension of the East London Line due to be completed in 2010.

Dalston has always been an area that attracts new arrived immigrants; at the turn of the century it was a popular Jewish area for the newly arrived from central Europe. In the fifties and sixties, as the Jewish community became more affluent, they were replaced by a large Caribbean community in Dalston, which is reflected by the wide choice of Caribbean foods available in Ridley Road. As the Caribbean community slowly drifted out of Dalston it then became popular with the Turkish, as well as the Vietnamese. Recent émigrés to the community are the Polish community judging by the numbers of Polish delicatessens now appearing and other stores catering to Polish tastes.

Nearest places:
De Beauvoir Town
Hackney Central
Haggerston
Kingsland
London Fields
Newington Green
Shacklewell
Stoke Newington
Shoreditch
Hoxton

Useful Links:
Dalston on Wikipedia
Dalston Underground Studios
My Dalston
London Borough of Hackney
East London

Public transport links in Dalston, E8

Real estate agents in Dalston, E8

Properties listed on eleflat.co.uk

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