Shacklewell House
The Herons were one of Hackney’s gentry families, and owned one of the most important houses and estates in the area. Shacklewell was then a hamlet separate from Dalston, which was itself a village separate from Hackney.
Shacklewell House stood in what is now Seal Street. It was recorded as “an ancient manor house” in 1720, but had vanished by the end of the eighteenth century, and no picture of the main house is known to survive – this drawing shows the gatehouse not long before its demolition. In 1664 the house was assessed for purposes of taxation as having 24 hearths. We also know that it was a three storey brick house, so clearly this was a mansion of some size and status - it was the manor house for Shacklewell, and was the centre of a large holding of land, including a number of farms.
The Heron family was a rich and influential one in the area. Sir John Heron, who founded their fortune, worked for both Henry VII and Henry VIII as a financial administrator, holding a number of appointments including Chamberlain of the Exchequer. Heron was also in charge of the financial arrangements for the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a huge diplomatic initiative to celebrate peace between England and France. As this involved several hundred people living in a specially made city of tents outside Calais, with each side trying to outdo the other in luxury and sophistication, Heron seems to have been an administrator of some distinction. He became a benefactor of his church, and his coat of arms appeared alongside those of the rector in the Church of St Augustine.
Giles Heron, his son, is the focus of Dancing at Whitsun. When his father died, Giles was still in his teens. In 1529, when he was in his early twenties, he became an MP and married. Cecily, one of the daughters of Sir Thomas More, with whom he had several children. As well as their estate in Hackney, the Herons owned thousands of acres of land all over south east England, and for the next decade Giles’s life seems to have taken the expected pattern for a wealthy landowner.
However, in 1539, a disgruntled former tenant accused him of having “mumbled certain words against the king” in the parlour of his own home. On the strength of this evidence, Heron was executed for treason – he was not even allowed a trial, declared a traitor by a special act of parliament. At this time it was enough to be denounced by one of the many paid spies. It is likely that Heron was especially open to suspicion after the execution for treason of his father in law, Sir Thomas More.
After Giles Heron’s execution, Ralph Sadleir saw to it that Heron's young sons came to live at Sutton House, and was granted control of the vast Heron estates. It is impossible to know for sure how much of his motivation was kindness towards two orphaned boys and their mother, and how much was a desire to build up his own property portfolio.