13 January 2026

Looking back on 20 years of placemaking in De Beauvoir Town

Over almost two decades, De Beauvoir Town has undergone a transformation, with better homes, shops, workplaces and schools. In close collaboration with others, the Benyon Estate is proud to have helped make those improvements possible!

The challenge facing the Estate nearly 20 years ago was how to turn a collection of buildings into a community. The first step came following a management review by the Benyon family and Estate trustees, after decades when the Estate was run by external professionals.

At that time, the area lacked a coherent collection of places to shop. Businesses struggled to find the right kind of offices appropriate for the modern workplace, and local families had nowhere close at hand to send their children to school.

They also found residential tenants of the more than 300 historic early Victorian homes owned by the Estate deserved a better standard of service from their landlord, including a faster response to problems and an effective maintenance programme.

Edward Benyon was asked to take a leading role in the Estate’s management, initially as a client of the property management company and, from 2007, as Estate Manager – the role he fulfils today.

Edward’s initiative, with businessman Harry Davies, to create the De Beauvoir Deli on Southgate Road on the site of what had been a tumbledown car spares shop, was the catalyst for the revitalisation of the neighbourhood shops that are now a cornerstone of the Estate.

Edward says: “The Deli was a big turning point. If you can imagine when people were coming in to look at our houses to let they would come into De Beauvoir and they would see a really run down retail neighbourhood centre and this falling down car spares shop.

“When we built the Deli, everybody upped their game. People would come in and see a lovely neighbourhood centre and a delicatessen. That’s when things really started to improve... That’s when we realised we had the ability to do something really quite special here.”

The De Beauvoir Deli and Deli Café across the road are now part of a neighbourhood centre including several cafés, a pizza restaurant, fresh food shops, a flower shop, garden centre and wine bar. In all there is a portfolio of 14 shops.

A further significant development on the Estate came with the provision of workspaces for commercial tenants through the conversion of the industrial buildings along De Beauvoir Road.

The transformation, completed in 2017, saw numbers 92 to 96 De Beauvoir Road become the De Beauvoir Block, a network of 33 workspaces, ranging from 300 to 2,500 square feet, designed and equipped to support individuals and businesses in the creative industries.

Neighbouring buildings at 98 and 100 De Beauvoir Road have also been transformed from mixed-use office and residential to contemporary office space.

The layout means start-ups can keep their costs down ‘hot-desking’ in the building and, as they grow and take on staff, trade up to more spacious accommodation. The Block Cafe and courtyard right at its centre provides that all-important chill-out space for lunch, coffee breaks and time away from the desk.

A much-needed new school was built on a site at Kingsland Road when the Estate was approached by the founders of a new Academy in desperate need of land to build in De Beauvoir.

The result is the Waterside Academy which opened in 2013 and is now gaining plaudits for the quality of its teaching.

A further opportunity to improve the education offering in De Beauvoir came when the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, announced the closure of the fire station on the corner of Kingsland Road in January 2014.

The Department for Education had already agreed that the Trust which ran the Waterside Academy could open a primary school. The former fire station site, opposite the existing secondary school, was the obvious choice.

The site was acquired from the fire authority by the Department for Communities and Local Government on behalf of the Department for Education. They needed a partner to develop the site and create other uses alongside the primary school, to help subsidise development costs.

They chose the Benyon Estate because of its local knowledge and existing relationship with the secondary school. The Estate obtained planning permission for the school and retail space – which has since become a dental surgery – along with 68 flats.

The site opened in 2019 and Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road have been recognised with a number of architectural awards, including the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize, the RIBA National and Regional Awards for 2022 and the International Architecture Awards.

Close involvement in the community is a hallmark of the way the Benyon Estate is run today, acknowledging that it takes a wide range of organisations and individuals to create a cohesive whole and the Estate can use its position to help drive that process forward.

From the De Beauvoir Gardens to St Peter’s Church and family events like Party in the Park or the Jazz Festival, working with others is seen as vital, demonstrating an engagement that was simply not there when outside managers looked after the Estate.

Residents of Benyon Estate now have places to eat, places to shop, places to work and places to relax. Their children can be educated just a short walk away and the community is clearly thriving. There is still more to do, but the Benyon Estate is much, much more today than a collection of buildings.