Hackney - the abode of love

Hackney is usually considered the abode of crime and violence and indeed there were a few times today whn I feared for my (extremely cheap) camera. But back in the day, Hackney was home to a false messianic cult - the Abode of Love.

First I called at Leandro Erlich's Dalston House an art installation in Dalston where visitors interact with the exhibit by walking on the facade of a house laid on the ground and are reflected in a mirror showing them seemingly hanging off a facade in a sort of 'human fly' way. The next bit I got wrong although the Round Chapel is of great interest it is not the abode of love. It was once the Clapton Park Congregational Church. A grade two listed building it is now used as a community arts centre. I thought the inscription was suitably far out to be cultish but it seems it was not intended to be so as the Congregationalists were and still are eminently respectable. So I shall tell the story of the Abode of Love another day.