Springfield Park slopes down to the Lee Navigation and Springfield Marina on the far bank. Half your customers arrive along that towpath, and the other half come off Clapton Common with no idea the river's down there.

Upper Clapton

Springfield Park drops to Springfield Marina on the far bank, and Clapton Common has no idea it's uphill of a river.

Springfield Park opened on 5 August 1905, after the London County Council acquired the estate, and spans 14.73 hectares as a designated local nature reserve. One of the three original private houses on the estate, Springfield House, survives near the main entrance and now operates as a cafe; the other two, Springhill House and The Chestnuts, were demolished after deterioration. Archaeological finds from the park include Roman sarcophagi and pottery, and the Hackney Boat, a late-Saxon logboat found in 1987 and now held at Hackney Museum.

From the park, the ground slopes down to the Lee Navigation towpath, with Springfield Marina, a narrowboat basin, sitting across the water. That single physical fact splits Upper Clapton's customer base in two: people moving along the towpath by boat, on foot or by bike, and people approaching from the streets and Clapton Common above, who have no reason to know the park drops to a river and a marina behind it at all.

Clapton Common, formerly Broad Common, lies to the west along Upper Clapton Road, and the area's northern edge runs into Stamford Hill without Upper Clapton claiming any part of it. There is no shopping parade here, so a website has to work out, in plain terms, whether it's speaking to the towpath customer or the common-side one, and how long the walk between them actually is.