The way to the Cass family’s country house

Hackney was a long village built along either side of the main road, stretching from Cambridge Heath Orchards and London Field in the south up past Homerton, to the closely joined villages of Clapton and Stoke Newington to the north. Turn right just past Cambridge Heath and a small track would take you to the small cluster of houses called Grove Street. Sir John Cass’s father, Thomas Cass, brought his wife and four year old son here in 1665, probably to be away from a summer of sickness in London.