Adam Dant’s Map of Hoxton Square 2011

Click to see what goes on in Hoxton Square

Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Martin Usborne is leaving Hoxton Square, and he commissioned this map from Adam Dant as a momento. Once it was the life of the square that drew the photographer to live here but now it is the excess of life that is driving him away. The drama and the craziness have reached such a pitch that Martin has no choice but to take his leave, if he is ever to have another night’s uninterrupted sleep in his life.

Recently, Martin and Adam have identified more than seventy different “Hoxton Types” that may be spotted in the Square and which are illustrated here on the map. I imagine Martin looking down from his window in wonder, in the way that Mark Lester does in the film of “Oliver” when he awakens at Mr Brownlow’s house after being rescued from Fagin’s gang. Only, instead of the “Cries of London,” Martin looks out onto the rampage you see above, as portrayed in such loving graphic detail by Adam.

Whether you celebrate this as an exuberant libertarian paradise or whether you condemn it as the nadir of unpleasantness is a matter of mere opinion, but there is no doubt that in recent years Hoxton Square has become a phenomenon – a crowded playground where those who so desire are may lose their inhibitions and their wallets with ease. “It must have some charm or why would people come all the way from Essex to go there?” asked Adam, with a twinkle in his eye and his tongue firmly in his cheek.

Hoxton Square is the East End’s Garden of Earthly Delights, peopled with Dog Walkers, Art Collectors, Art World Dilettantes, Art Dealers, Haircuts,Cycle Couriers, Trustafarians, Hen/Stag Nights, Estate Ped-Heads, Bengali Boys, Postcode Gangstas, Shrouded Girls, Eccentric Designers, Foreign Students, Smartphone Addicts, Vertical Drinkers, Light Industry Dregs, VVV Stupid Fashions, Scruffy Journos, Graffiti Tourists, Lost Dutch Travellodgers, Italian Anarchists, Polish Labourers, Polish Benchdwellers, Homeless/Drugs, Homeless/Dogowners, Homeless/Chirpy, Hoxton Elderly,Fast Food Barons, Hippy Circus Parents, Shh! Lesbians, Brooklyn Hipsters, Tribally Tattooed Folk, Out of Place Parents, Trashy Waitresses, A.D.D. Children, Ladettes, Japanese Stylists, Drunk Bankers, General Dickheads, Clowns, Sanctioned Graffitists, Fixi Bores, Rentokill Workers, Ukranian Pole Dancers, Strip Club Patrons, Media Nodes, Screwtop Rosé Girls, Interns, Coffee Bores, BBC Drama Shoot Participants, Tamagotchi Billionaires, Fashion Shoots, Nigerian Shoe Vendors, Incongruous Joggers, Plain Clothes Cops, Fried Food Schoolkids, Flash Restaurateurs,Pissers, Sterodial Bouncers, Flower Shoppers, Sticky Tape Artists, Performance Artists, Tai Chi Beginners, Architecture Students, Council Planning Officers, Bicycle Thieves, Drugs Vendors – and Joseph Markovitch,and Martin Usborne and his dog Moose.

In the top left of this detail of the map you can see Martin Usborne (walking his dog Moose) and Joseph Markovitch, a native of Hoxton.

Images copyright © Adam Dant

You might like to look at Martin Usborne’s photographs of

Joseph Markovtich of Hoxton

and A Fox in Hoxton.

You may also like to see

Adam Dant’s Hackney Treasure Map

or his Redchurch St Rake’s Progress

or his Map of the History of Shoreditch,

or his Map of Shoreditch in the Year 3000,

or his Map of Shoreditch as New York,

or his Map of Shoreditch as the Globe,

or his Map of Shoreditch in Dreams,

or his Map of the History of Clerkenwell