Rebecca Mordan, 44, Artistic Director of Feminist Production Company, Scary Little Girls

“I had really enjoyed living in cities growing up - particularly northern cities - but I was really ready to come to London. I got myself into Essex Road in the Angel and I really enjoyed the pace of that, the non-stop 24/7 party of living on that street. Then 15 years ago, my partner, my friend and I looked to buy and we knew we couldn’t afford to buy in the Angel - another friend of ours said - 'have you looked at Newington Green?'

I remember her sitting and drawing us a map. She was saying there’s this amazing Indian takeaway Suruchi, which we still use, there's a group called the Newington Green Action Group which transforms the area.

We were like ‘this sounds like an amazing area’ and it’s like 20 minutes up the road? This is madness! We started looking around here and one of the first things you see when you get to Newington Green is the banner at New Unity that says ‘Birthplace of Feminism' - and I was like ‘oh my god, it’s my spiritual home’! 

When I found out it was where Mary Wollstonecraft had been and then I realised it was the same Newington Green that I was very regularly reading about - I’m a big fan of Victorian novels and they regularly talk about going off in the carriage for a day to spend a few days at Newington Green. It’s where they go when they want to have radical dissent. And all of that echoed so much about my life as an actor, an activist and as a feminist. 

And sure enough, we’ve lived here ever since and we absolutely love it. I can’t imagine myself living anywhere else, I absolutely love it.”