Nick Toner

Deputy Chair

Nick Toner joined the Abney Park Trust as a trustee in May 2020 and became Deputy Chair in September 2021. He is proud to be a custodian of this magical urban woodland – a space open to all, and a place free from the pressures of the modern city.

As Deputy Chair, Nick helps represent the Trust in the local community and to a variety of stakeholders. He chairs our events committee, which co-ordinates and helps plan the many walking tours, history presentations, workshops, open days and more which occur in the park. He also looks after the Trust’s communications, and helps to tell Abney’s fascinating stories to the public through the local and national media.

Nick works as General Manager at New Unity and its Newington Green Meeting House – a building once home to Mary Wollstonecraft and other pioneering radicals. He also works as a writer, both creatively and as a ghostwriter on behalf of businesses and organisations.

Nick has a strong interest in the urban landscape, and how that links to nature and heritage. He grew up in Cumbria but now lives close to Abney, and has lived in this general area of London for years. His grandfather was born in Hackney in the 1920s, and his grandfather’s godfather William Bramwell Booth is buried right here in Abney close to the Church Street entrance. He has felt it an honour to be able to give something back to this community, and to help preserve Hackney’s shared memory for future generations.