Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney.
In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area (though this also includes parts of Stamford Hill and the almost extinct district of Shacklewell). Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too. However, Stoke Newington was once a well-defined administrative unit. In 1899 the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington was formed out of the greater part of the parish of Stoke Newington. The resulting boundaries seem rather anomalous now; the entire eastern side of Stoke Newington High Street and beyond, including Stoke Newington Common, were included in the next door Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, but in fact this area was already part of the parish of Hackney - not Stoke Newington - and much of it would have been regarded as being in Shacklewell at the time. These apparent oddities became moot when in 1965, the Metropolitan Borough became part of the London Borough of Hackney....
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