 Hello, thank you for joining me. You can see where I am today. I'm at Hackley Downs Station. I haven't actually come here to look at trains. The reason I've come here to start this video is because we're going to see the old church tower in Hackley. So if we go through here, you may be able to see over there there's a church tower. Well, we're going to go to that church tower. We're going to go on the roof. So the way we're going to go out of Hackley Downs Station rather than going out the main entrance that way, we're going to follow this long walkway which takes you through to Hackley Central on the north London line. That's one of the lines out of Liverpool Street. So follow this long corridor down here and this takes us out of Hackley Central Station and then we're going to go and look for the church tower. So I came out of Hackley Central Station which is just over there on the north London line and the church we've come to see is just here in front of us here. So we're going to go inside. We're going to go have a good look around it. We're going to go up. But what we'll do first, we'll start by having a look at the how the church, I'll try and paint a picture as to how the church would have been originally. So we've got the church tower there. The church would have gone out that way. The porch, the entrance to the church would have been around here somewhere. So putting out a door there. But here would have been the porch. You'd have come into the church here. You can see just about up there. You can just see a line. That would have been about where the roof of the porch would have been to the church itself. I'll start to see what it says. Tower open Sunday which is today on the corner of this video. It would have been across to here. You can see there's a corner stone just here. So it says it was the northwest corner of the original church. So the church wall would have been across here. The porch was there. And then where there's now loads of crocuses growing, that would have been the church itself in there. Over there is Hackley bus garage. And then we, I don't want to walk through the crocuses. It's under the way now. But just getting to the shadow of the tower. You can see the doors just there. So we'll go there. We'll go inside. Climb up the tower. I'm really looking forward to seeing the views of the tower. No doubt we'll see some trains on the north London line. So that'll be good for that. On the sins down here. I'll show you the new church. And then I suppose the thing I really ought to do is explain why we have this tower. This old church tower with no church and a new church over there. So what happened? Going back years ago, we had the train on the north London line, years and years ago, before the north London line was probably even thought of Hackley existed, but it wasn't the suburb of London it was today. It was a small village, a few miles north of London. And like most small villages, this would have been just country church out, you know, in the country. But as Hackley grew and became the suburb of London, the congregation of the church grew. But the church wasn't big enough to support the congregation. It had over a thousand people to congregation. They had about a thousand seats, but it wasn't enough. They tried adding galleries upstairs, but it was quite, it wasn't that high. Well, the tower itself is high. The nave wouldn't have been particularly high. While I'm standing here, the wall of the nave would have been about where I'm standing. So I'll be sort of standing, technically I'd say here I'm standing inside, here I'm standing outside. There's enough train on the north London line. But the whole fifth point was the church just was simply not big enough for the population. Once trains started running and people could travel and people would start to live here and, you know, commute into London as that became a thing. And then, of course, the bus carriage came, although the bus coaches were way after this church disappeared. But what happened then? Got to a point, this church just simply was not big enough. They needed a new church. So in 1791, James Spiller, the architect, began building that church over there and that was finished in 1797. But that church didn't have a tower. The demolition of this church was scheduled to happen 1798 and the demolition of the church did happen. But that one still, over there, that one still didn't have a tower. So what they had to do was they had to keep the bells in this one. And then eventually, in 1841, that church, as you can see just through the trees, they will go and have a proper look at it later, that church got its tower. But it wasn't strong enough to hold the bells. So this church tower still had a purpose. So they kept the bells here. Eventually, they underpinned that church tower and it was strong enough to hold the bells. But the contractor said it was too difficult a job to demolish this one. So happily, it's still here. And because he didn't demolish it, it means we can now go up it. So let's go and do that. Here we are inside the church. I'm on the ground floor. So we're going to go up there. So you go over there. And I've been told by the mountain to shout coming up just in case it will come down. Coming up. No one's responded. So I'm going to go up. So let's see. This is exciting. Always enjoy going up the towers. And we haven't gone very far yet, but get quite a nice view already of the little room where we started. Just put the camera through there soon. That won't seem very high when we go higher. There's a few more little rooms on the way up which we'll stop to look at as we go. The stairs will probably get narrower. It's fairly narrow now, but I think it's going to get narrower. I've been coming to a little room just here so the stairs continue on upwards. Let's go in. Here we have a small room. You can just see up there the pendulum for the clock swinging. So this room has like an exhibition of Hackley. I won't go through everything there is in here, but if you come and visit it, as I showed, it's very easy to get to by public transport. You'd be able to read all of this. So it gives you a history of Hackley, rather from two to times, up to the future. And the one thing I do want to show is that the tower block being demolished. That's Norford Point on the Tronebridge estate. That's the one that famously didn't finish collapsing and became the leading south Hackley. Let's continue on up to see the views. Coming up. And I think there's some other people in front of me, so I don't think I need to worry too much about someone coming down. So exciting. I've always, always really enjoyed going up towers. Railways is one of my main interests, going up towers, which is so much fun. And here is St Augustine's Clock. Let's see it all working. Look up there, there's a shaft and that would go through there. You can see the weights to the tower. I'm sorry, outside the tower, to the clock. It's very fascinating. Can't really see out much. I can just see through the windows, the trees, the London Plains. We might go see a bit out this window. We're above the height of the railway. I appreciate you can't see because the sun's shining right in. Let's continue on up. So I heard someone shout coming down, but coming up. Someone else is coming up, so I'm going to continue on up before somebody else comes down. It has got slightly narrower. Now I'm going to switch it. The next one will be the roof. Oh, there go the bells. Make that three o'clock. So it's three o'clock and we're climbing up the hilltop. Oh look, there's the bell. Oh no, it's, I see what's going on. Probably not three o'clock. You can just ring the bell yourself while I'm going to do that now. I'm going to make people think it's, I don't know, should we say four o'clock? That's fun. I could do that all day. Let's do it one more time. It's really loud when you're up here in the bell tower. So yeah, it's probably not quite three o'clock. I probably just made Hackney think that ours are going really fast at the moment. So you can see not much outside. You can see wooden slats. I can just see the railway through there. We'll get a better view when we get there. So I think we are now in the top room of the tower. Let's have one more ring of the bell. I might, if I have a load of money, I'd build a bell tower in my own house. Let's go to the top of the tower there and see the views because that's the most exciting thing I suppose about a shop coming up. Coming up. You can see by looking down it really is narrow now. Yeah, it's even narrower and darker up here, but I can see above me the stairs become wooden. So I think we're very close to the top. We're there, I think. Here we go. And I've now got to crawl out this tiny little door here and see the views. So let's go out here. Hello. Thank you. Enjoy the sky. I will do. Thanks very much. Here we are on top of the tower. There's the North London Line down there. See the Olympic Park. There's the New Church which we're going to have a look at afterwards. So that way is looking north. And what else can we see? Sorry. And you can see over there, if the camera is going to pick it up, I can just see Alexandra Palace over there. I can see a train over at Hackney Down Station on the line out of Liverpool Street. See the main bulk of the City of London over there. If we come over to here, we can see we're above the London Plains. That's the first tower. There's the bus garage and up above us. Go even higher as a weather vane. I feel a bit like Fred Dipner right now being on top of the church. So I'm going to hang around up here, see a few trains and enjoy the views. And then what we'll do, we'll go down there to the New Church and just have a look. I don't know if we're going to be able to go inside, but we'll certainly go and have a look. Enjoyed going up that church tower. Now let's go and have a look at this church's replacement. So as I said here would have been the whole nave of the church. Then there was a tower over there. As I pointed out earlier is the New Church which James Spur had built. I believe inside it has like a Greek cross. So people sit around the nave in equal amounts. So it's a bit more like a non-conformist church. I don't think everyone was so keen on that idea, but that's how he wanted to have it. So if you look at the church now, there it is. Imagine it to start with without a tower. So hence the title of the video, the church without a tower and the tower without a church. Well we've seen the tower without a church. This was the church without a tower, but it has had the tower added on later. It's just that like I said earlier, they didn't make it strong enough to house the bells, but it's all quite happy ending really. The fact that you know we've still got that old church. That's the oldest building in Hackney. It still survives and we can go up there and enjoy the views, which you know if they had built this perhaps in you know the way it's perhaps been intended with a church that was strong enough in the first place, it probably wouldn't still be there. There we go. You can see how the tower's just been added on on top. I don't think it's probably going to be open which is a shame. I'd like to have gone inside maybe another day. We can come back and go so because inside there are some Tudor tombs that came out the old church that were put into this church. If you have a look here there's a sort of bit of a graveyard. There's a few tombs there so they've possibly been moved from the old church. I'm not 100% sure. Let's have a look at the front of the church. That's quite a pleasant little corner of London, corner of Hackney. This area here is. There you go. There's the church that was added in 1814. The church that wasn't strong enough to hold the bells. As we know that one still has a bell. It's just it doesn't ring on the clock. It rings by people like me who enjoy. That was that made my day ringing the bell. I really enjoyed doing that. So from outside the new church which does now have a tower. Thank you very much for watching. If you want to come and visit the old church in Hackney it has an open day usually on the last Sunday of the month. You can come and visit during the afternoon so do come and visit them. From outside the new church thank you very much for watching. Please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment. Goodbye.