De Beauvoir Town is a district in east London and is in the London Borough of Hackney, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the City of London. The area was a part of the Hackney; the Ancient Parish and subsequent Metropolitan Borough that was incorporated into the larger modern borough.
The area was developed in the mid-19th century, much of it as a carefully planned new town designed to attract prosperous residents, although it does include a range of other housing and land use types.
The new town was based around De Beauvoir Square and primarily built in the Jacobethan style. The special character of the neighbourhood has been retained and is recognised by the designation of the De Beauvoir and Kingsland Road Conservation Areas which include many listed and other notable buildings.
Notable residents
Edmund Gosse, the poet, the son of naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, lived in the area. Tony Calvert, co-founder of Terrence Higgins Trust, lives in the area.
Graham Parsey (1938-2011), architect, journalist, local campaigner and Chairman of the De Beauvoir Association, who from the late 1960's with the formation of the DBA (De Beauvoir Association) worked to make the area a GIA (General Improvement Area) and therefore saved the whole area from demolition by Hackney Council. He stood at three Public Inquiries as an expert witness and led and organised a successful community campaign to oppose the demolition of six hundred houses. The status of De Beauvoir as a conservation area, the fact that the area still stands in its present form is because of his work. He self-published the De Beaver newspaper which was the hub of local activity. He also designed and implemented all the cycle pathways and traffic calming measures in the 1970s, which is such a feature of the area today.
De Beauvoir Town was home to William Lyttle (1931–2010), a retired electrical engineer known as the Mole Man of Hackney, who dug a series of tunnels under his 20-room property on the corner of Mortimer Road and Stamford Road. In 2001, his tunnelling caused an 8 ft (2.4 m) hole to appear in the pavement on Stamford Road. Reports that the tunnelling had started again in 2006 were confirmed when Hackney Council found a network of tunnels and caverns, some 8 m (26 ft) deep, spreading up to 20m in every direction from his house. In August 2006, the council obtained a court order banning Lyttle from his property. He died in 2010 and the fate of the house, by now derelict and needing a new roof, was thought to be uncertain. On 19 July 2012 the house was sold at auction for £1.12 million. By 2020, the house had been renovated by the architect David Adjaye to form a home and studio for the artist Sue Webster.
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