London’s Formerly Down-Market Area Now A-List Hotspot: Local Anger Explored

No one could ever accuse pop phenomenon Charli XCX of being work-shy. When she took to the stage at the Lido music festival in Victoria Park, east London, on June 14, it was straight from a gruelling tour that has seen her criss-cross the globe for the past eight months.

So it’s a fair guess that the 32-year-old singer, real name Charlotte Aitchison, would have been looking forward to sleeping in her own bed once the 90-minute show was over. And, as luck would have it, she didn’t have far to go.

Success has bought Charli XCX – whose hit album Brat last year earned the approval of US presidential nominee Kamala Harris and spawned a hedonistic cultural trend dubbed ‘Brat summer’ – a £3.8millon home in Los Angeles.

But the Cambridge-born star also has a more modest residence in the shape of a simple, terraced flat bought for an undisclosed amount in – where else? – Hackney.

This once down-market industrial hub may seem an odd choice for A-listers more accustomed to the glitz and glamour of Beverly Hills. But, in recent years, British-based celebrities have turned away from the cobbled streets of west London and descended in their droves on Hackney – much to the discomfort of long-standing locals, as the Mail discovered this week.

Indeed, it is not just Charli XCX singing the borough’s praises – as the famous faces in the Lido Festival crowd would attest.

Also there was Hollywood actor Paul Mescal, who has spoken about his time living in the borough after his breakout role in the TV drama Normal People in 2020, and whom starry-eyed fans regularly claimed to see jogging topless around Victoria Park or along the nearby canal.

With him was actor Harris Dickinson, who recently starred as Nicole Kidman’s toyboy in erotic thriller Babygirl and is one of Mescal’s co-stars in the forthcoming four-part biopic about The Beatles.

The 32-year-old singer, real name Charlotte Aitchison, lives nearby in a terraced flat bought for an undisclosed amount in Hackney

Perhaps even more notably, there was the actor James Norton and singer Lily Allen apparently enjoying a rather affectionate first date after meeting through celebrity dating app Raya.

Then there was former One Direction heart-throb Harry Styles, a long-standing Hackney devotee who celebrated his 19th birthday in the borough back in 2013.

Away from the park, Sex And The City star Sarah Jessica Parker has a home in Hackney while BBC Radio 1 presenter Greg James and ‘it-girl’ Alexa Chung are also locals. Even the Duke and Duchess of Sussex appear to be fans, picking Hackney bakery Violet to make their wedding cake in 2018.

Little wonder, then, that this circle of well-connected movers and shakers has triggered comparisons with another celebrity enclave: the so-called ‘Primrose Hill set’ whose hedonistic goings-on in the late 1990s and early 2000s were rarely out of the headlines.

Although the supporting cast changed from time to time, the core group – most of whom lived and socialised in the eponymous north London neighbourhood – included supermodel Kate Moss, Hollywood stars Jude Law, Sienna Miller and Rhys Ifans, and Oasis frontmen Noel and Liam Gallagher.

While they eventually drifted apart after Law’s bitter divorce from fashion designer Sadie Frost in 2003, one subsequent report remarked upon the group’s reputation for ‘having a whale of a time with drink, drugs and bed-hopping’.

Such louche carry-ons seem unlikely in 2025 and the era of celebrity wellness brands. But, even so, the sight of Hackney’s star-studded streets begs the question: Is E9 the new postcode of power?

Society bible Tatler certainly thinks so – last year it praised Hackney as the ‘borough du jour’.

Actor Mescal is said to socialise regularly the east London borough’s popular Spurstowe Arms pub 

Hackney’s Broadway Market operates more than 50 stalls offering street food every weekend

In gushing tones, the magazine declared the area ‘a new social heartland… brimming with it-girls and Gen Z glamazons’. Apparently, it is also ‘a leafy place where boujie [fancy and expensive] cafes reign supreme and “natty” [natural] wine is as ubiquitous as tins of Perello olives’.

Among the hostelries it highlighted was Hackney bar The Shacklewell Arms, a venue frequented by Mescal, his Normal People co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones and Irish actress Saoirse Ronan.

Another drinking den to get an enthusiastic thumbs-up was cocktail bar Night Tales, where techno music is on the sound system and regulars include ‘royal raver Princess Laetitia Maria of Belgium’.

Hackney is a food-lover’s paradise, too, it boasts no fewer than seven Michelin-starred restaurants – including Plates, the first vegan establishment in the UK ever to be awarded a star.

The famous Broadway Market – which operates more than 50 stalls offering street food every weekend – was named by industry chiefs as Britain’s best food market last year.

The regular shops lining the street, which are open all week, include a number of specialist bookstores with arcane titles such as Baldness & Modernism, and Cigarettes: 1930-2010.

Another thoroughfare likely to meet with celebrity approval is Wilton Way, dotted with bistros, galleries, boutiques and even a ‘floral atelier’ (a flower shop to you and me).

And the Towpath Cafe, along the Regent’s Canal, has a clientele that includes actress Tracey Ullman, designer Simone Rocha and award-winning chef Fergus Henderson. Its most famous customer, Keira Knightley, says the cafe is ‘one of the reasons I live in London’, adding: ‘It’s a jewel-like, dream of a place.’

Then there’s the green spaces: the borough’s 58 parks – which amount to 282 hectares – make up the largest amount of recreational green space in inner London. According to the council website, Hackney Marshes includes Europe’s ‘greatest concentration of football pitches’ while the nearby 86-hectare Victoria Park – which hosts the Lido Festival and All Points East festival every August – attracts nine million visitors a year.

Yet, while fans may be delighted at Hackney’s newfound Hollywood appeal, many locals are rather less excited by it.

Adjoining Wilton Way is the austere Wilton Estate, developed as social housing in the 1950s. One resident I speak to tells me he often sees celebrities such as Paul Mescal socialising in the Spurstowe Arms pub round the corner. But, when I ask what he thinks of his glitzy neighbours, his response is less than enthusiastic.

‘I wouldn’t have any particular problem with famous people moving into the area but those sort of people will be looking at the houses going for £2million or more,’ he tells me.

‘That shouldn’t be an issue because those sorts of prices are out of reach of anyone from around here anyway. But – and it’s a big “but” – the problem is that these things trickle down. Even for locals like me, places you can’t swing a cat in end up costing crazy money.’

And the threat of soaring house prices isn’t the only issue.

Hackney had the highest burglary rate in London last year and is among the capital’s top five most crime-ridden boroughs. The CrimeRate website also states: ‘As of 2025, the crime rate in Hackney is 28 per cent higher than London [overall figure] and 55 per cent higher than the England, Wales and Northern Ireland overall figure.’

More detailed statistics reveal an even more alarming picture. Based on 4,475 crime reports logged by the Met in the 12 months to the end of last September, the rate of ‘theft from the person’ offences in Hackney was 38 times the national average.

The rate of vehicle crime was three times higher than the national figure. Separate research shows that rates of gang and knife violence in the borough are among the worst in London.

As one resident, who only gave her name as Sarah, tells me: ‘There are enough youngsters hanging around here doing nothing already.

‘The last thing we want around here are famous punters strutting around like they own the place and their hordes of silly fans making a nuisance of themselves.’

As I continue on to Hackney’s main thoroughfare, Mare Street, the chichi restaurants and boutiques beloved by the stars might as well be on a different planet.

Instead, the grim streetscape consists of little more than burger joints, downmarket retailers and bookies. Only the beautifully ornate Hackney Empire, a redbrick Grade II-listed building that opened as a music hall in 1901, offers some brief respite from the parade of eyesores.

Nor does it improve much along the pedestrianised section at the street’s northern end. Even the presence of a Gail’s coffee shop – which has become something of a symbol for gentrification – and the impressive St Augustine’s Tower, which dates back to the 16th century and is represented in the borough’s coat of arms, fail to cheer things up.

For the remainder of the stretch, it is largely more of the same: fast food outlets, phone repair premises and soulless-looking shops. The main difference here is the greater number of vacant, shuttered-up storefronts covered in graffiti.

Right at the very top, where Mare Street meets Lower Clapton Road, is The Crown pub. It is an unthreatening but faintly depressing sort of a place, where a friendly bartender serves a clientele of largely silent middle-aged men drinking on their own.

Racing from Royal Ascot is on the telly and betting dockets are on the tables. A ‘polite notice’ instructs customers: ‘No sitting in the window seats during darts matches.’

There are a couple of light-hearted posters on the walls – one references Jägerbombs ‘helping women lower their standards for years’ – but there is precious little laughter to be heard.

Frankly, it doesn’t feel like the sort of place that Hackney’s incoming celebrity population might start gravitating towards.

Back outside, scores of people are soaking up the afternoon sunshine in the pretty surroundings of St John’s Church Gardens. Among them is Elaine Shields, a 40-something mother who says only that she has lived in Hackney for ‘years’.

Her verdict, at least, is a little more optimistic. ‘This place has its faults, it isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But there is a nice community spirit around here,’ she tells.

But, with a raised eyebrow, even Elaine admits: ‘I don’t think having a bunch of celebrities here is going to improve that.’