"Hogesdon" is first recorded in the Domesday Book, meaning an Anglo-Saxon farm (or "fortified enclosure") belonging to Hoch, or Hocq. Little is recorded of the origins of the settlement, though there was Roman activity around Ermine Street, which ran to the east of the area from the 1st century. In medieval times, Hoxton formed a rural part of Shoreditch parish. In 1415, the Lord Mayor of London "caused the wall of the City to be broken towards Moorfields, and built the postern called Moorgate, for the ease of the citizens to walk that way upon causeways towards Islington and Hoxton" – at that time, still marshy areas. The residents responded by harassing walkers to protect their fields. A century later, the hedges and ditches were destroyed, by order of the City, to enable City dwellers to partake in leisure at Hoxton. By Tudor times many moated manor houses existed to provide ambassadors and courtiers country air nearby the City. This included many Catholics, attracted by the house of the Portuguese Ambassador, who, in his private chapel, celebrated the masses forbidden in a Protestant country. The open fields to the north and west were frequently used for archery practice, and on 22 September 1598 the playwright Ben Jonson fought a fatal duel in Hoxton Fields, killing actor Gabriel Spencer. Jonson was able to prove his literacy, thereby claiming benefit of clergy to escape a hanging.
By the end of the 17th century the nobility's estates began to be broken up. Many of these large houses became to be used as schools, hospitals or mad houses, with almshouses being built on the land between by benefactors, most of whom were City liverymen. Aske's Almshouses were built on Pitfield Street in 1689 from Robert Aske's endowment for 20 poor haberdashers and a school for 20 children of freemen. Hoxton House, was established as a private asylum in 1695. It was owned by the Miles family, and expanded rapidly into the surrounding streets being described by Coleridge as the Hoxton madhouse. Here fee-paying 'gentle and middle class' people took their exercise in the extensive grounds between Pitfield Street and Kingsland Road; including the poet Charles Lamb. Over 500 pauper lunatics resided in closed wards, and it remained the Naval Lunatic Asylum until 1818. In the Victorian era the railways made travelling to distant suburbs easier, and this combined with infill building and industrialisation to drive away the wealthier classes, leaving Hoxton a concentration of the poor with many slums. The area became a centre for the furniture trade. Charles Booth in Life and Labour of the People in London of 1902 gave the following description: "The character of the whole locality is working-class. Poverty is everywhere, with a considerable admixture of the very poor and vicious ... Large numbers have been and are still being displaced by the encroachment of warehouses and factories ... Hoxton is known for its costers and Curtain criminals, for its furniture trade ... No servants are kept except in the main Road shopping streets and in a few remaining middle class squares in the west."
Hoxton station was first identified as a new station in a London Underground proposal made in 1993 to extend the line from Whitechapel to Dalston Junction, involving the construction of new stations at Bishopsgate (Later opened as Shoreditch High Street), Hoxton and Haggerston, and received the support of a public inquiry in 1994. It was envisaged that the construction of the extension and the station itself would begin in 1996 and to be completed by 1998. The project was finally approved by the Government in 1996 but a lack of funding forced the project to be delayed in 1997. The station is currently the only completely new station to be built along the route of the former Broad Street branch of the North London Line under the East London Line project, although it is located on the tracks leading to the former Shoreditch (Dunloe Street) Depot, which was closed in 1968. Hoxton station is a standard two-platform station with platforms situated on the Kingsland Viaduct. The platforms can accommodate a train of up to four carriages. The Ticket office and entrance concourse is located under the viaduct and access to each platform is provided by a lift and stairs. The station is in Travelcard Zone 2 and has wi-fi, lifts and help points but no toilets.
Connections: London Buses routes 26, 48, 55, 67, 149, 242, 243 and 394 and night routes N26 and N55 serve the station.
