North London Railway Newington Green
North London Railway
The North London Railway continues its route westwards
Post to the east Mildmay
Post to the west Aberdeen Park
This post covers only the south west corner of the square
Mildmay Grove North
Laid out in 1850. Long terraces across the deep crevasse of the North London Railway
37 Colony Mews 5 houses in what was 37h Mildmay Grove – this is part of a complex of old industrial buildings and offices. In the early 20th there was a laundry here and earlier some gardens.
Mildmay Grove South
2a Mount Refuge. First Born Church of God.
40 ½ modern glass and metal house a sequence of light filled rooms with modern furniture. By Philip Johnson and Leonie Milliner 2007
Railway Wall. The wall part of a former gent’s urinal and once boasted a painted horse, removed by Islington Council. It has been replaced by a boy with a flower. It has been claimed that this area marks the last remains of the Newington and Balls Pond Station.
Mildmay Park
Part of the estate which belonged to the Halliday/Mildmay family but sold off for building in the late19th by Sir John Mildmay. The family had had a house since the 17th on the south side of Newington Green. The grounds to the south of it stretched almost to the Balls Pond Road, and it is this area which was developed.
92 Clarendon Pub. This may currently be called The Dissenting Academy, and it was for a while The Nobody Inn.
85n Modern House by Graham Bickley
75a C.L.R.James House. This was 19th Founders Lodge and now the only remains of the Mildmay Mission - the Movement for World Evangelism - where it was used as a home and for retreats. Founders Lodge, Mildmay Centre. This was built for the Mildmay Movement . It is asymmetrical in yellow and red brick. It is now flats.
Mildmay Park Station .Opened in 1880 On the North London Railway. It stood on the east side of Mildmay Park at junction with Mildmay Grove North’s. The street buildings were designed by E.H, Horne with entrances in Mildmay Grove and Mildmay Park. It had ‘Mildmay Park Station’ and ‘North London Railway’ set in cement lettering around the top of the building and an ornamental rail round the roof. It closed in 1934 but the street building stayed in place used as a car repair workshop. It was demolished in 1987. Some parts of the platforms still remain as do the foundations of the over bridge and the street building.
Newington Green Road
Newington and Balls Pond Station. Opened in 1858 Built by the East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway to connect East London and the Docks with the London and Birmingham Railway at Camden Town. In 1870 when the line was widened from to four tracks the station was replaced by Canonbury Station on a different site.
59 The Alma. Recently closed and reopened.
98 The Weavers Arms Inn was, probably established in 1716 and rebuilt in the 1820s.
125 The Cellars Edinburgh. Mosaic floor saying ‘Billiards and Saloon Bar’. Formerly the Edinburgh Tavern. There is a Truman box sign above the corner door, possibly 1970s.
Brick boundary wall to the hospital and mission area remains
Newington Green
The Green is mentioned in 1480 and there was a small medieval settlement at Newington Green connected to the City by what is now Essex Road. It attracted affluent residents in 16th and by the 17th it had become a smart place to live and a number of new houses were built, some replacing older ones. The green was enclosed in 1742 and became an urban square and was given railings. Development followed in the 19th partly replaced by council flats between the wars and after Second World War Bombing. Today the area has a large Turkish population. The village around the green was once strongly non-conformist. Following the 1662 Act of Uniformity with a sympathetic land owner dissenting clergy came here and Mary Wollstonecraft tried to found a school here.
It is popularly thought that Henry VIII used the area for hunting and that he installed mistresses in a house to the south of the Green. The area does not seem to have been an enclosed forest in the legal sense and thus not available for hunting. Henry Percy, Duke of Northumberland, had a house here and died here in 1537. At her trial Anne Boleyn claimed to have had a contract of marriage with him and he granted his estates to the King to be handed on to family members.
Mildmay Hall – this was between Mildmay Park and Newington Green Road, south of Newington Green. This was a Conference Hall for the Mildmay Mission built in 1870 and demolished in 1959. The Deaconess House was attached.
Children’s play area behind Hathersage Court, This is on the site of Mildmay Hall. There is a memorial stone to Pennefather
Mildmay Cottage Hospital. This originally opened in 1866, was run by the nursing branch of the Mildmay Deaconess Institution, a group of Christian women led by the Vicar of St. Jude's, the Reverend William Pennefather. A new hospital was built in the centre of the compound in 1883 and called the Mildmay Memorial Cottage Hospital. In 1908 ‘Cottage’ was removed from the name. During the Great War the Hospital offered 23 of its beds to the War Office. By 1944 it treated mainly private patients. The Hospital joined the National Health Service in 1948 as part of the Archway Group. It closed in 1958 and was demolished and replaced by a council housing blocks
Hathersage Court. Local authority housing built in the 1960s on the site of the Mildmay Hospital. It is a 6 storey concrete framed block with pre-cast concrete infill panels with an exposed flint aggregate finish.
Besant Court. Local authority housing built on the site of the Mildmay Hospital in the 1950s.. Previously it was the site of the Spring Gardens Inn, built before 1725, Spring Gardens Coffee House by 1765.
9-10 Mildmay House. In 1611 William Halliday, a City Alderman built a house which was inherited by Henry Mildmay and thus it was called Mildmay House. It was later a boarding school and became the Nurses' Home in 1885. Demolished in the 1950s and is partly the site of Hathersage House.
30 Cromwell Lodge, 19th
31-32, a plain pair of houses built around 1809 with later extensions. May be built on the site of Bishop’s Place
The Bishops Palace was here until 1800 and may also be what has said to be .Henry VIII’s hunting lodge. It may also have been the home of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. A timber-framed building stood here which was probably 16th forming four sides of a courtyard and containing gilded and painted wainscotting. By the time it was demolished, it was called Bishop's Place and was divided into tenements for the poor.
Newington Green Primary School. The school fronts on to Mathias Road but on the Newington Green frontage is a plaque to the girls’ school started here by Mary Woolstonecraft.
35 may be one of six houses built in the 1690s next to a farmhouse belonging to Joan Nubler.
33-34 Mildmay Club. Thin Baroque of 1900 by Alfred Allen; over large segmental pedimented doorway small cupola. Began as Mildmay Radical club in 1888 at 36 Newington Green Road and moved to a newly built clubhouse at. 34 Newington Green in 1893. In 1930 it changed its name to Mildmay club and institute, and became nonpolitical; in the 1950s it staged weekly variety shows
35 behind projecting 19th shop fronts. A double-fronted 18th house – there has been a suggestion it is earlier, 1690, and may incorporate timber from an earlier building.
36-38 houses hidden behind projecting 19th shops. The houses date from the early 19th but may have older cores
39 Unitarian chapel. This is the earliest active Nonconformist chapel in London. It was built by in 1708 by Edward Hamson, goldsmith, for a congregation established in 1682 It has a 19th front and inside are box pews and monuments. Prominent members included Dr Richard Price, Anne Laetitia Barbauld, William Godwin Mary Wollstonecraft; Samuel Rogers, Dr Andrew Pritchard
Dissenting academy founded by Charles Morton in 1667 on the site of the Unitarian Church
40-41 Tariro House. Built as a bank in 1892 and used by Barclays. It is now flats and a care home.
41-43 Newington Green Mansions with a spirelet. Built in 1892 on the site of Monte Christo House an 18th mansion
42 The Gate. Restaurant on the ground floor of a block of Housing and health centre. Designed as a Six-storey curved comer tower by Rivington Street Studio's who won a Peabody Trust competition in 1996 for it. It is on the site of Holland or Olympic House which was a brick house belonging to the Brownswood estate, possibly dated from 1680 with a timber frame and which contained oak panelling attributed to Grinling Gibbons but years later. Demolished for factory buildings in 1965. The 18th-century iron gates and railings remained and are incorporated in the new buildings.
44-45 China Inland Mission building. Overseas Missionary Fellowship before 1964 called the China Inland Mission is an interdenominational Protestant Missionary society based in Singapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor in 1865 and built their headquarters here in 1895 with a 20th baroque screen with arched gate and open colonnade above between blocks of flats. Redeveloped in 2004 as student accommodation by Shaftesbury Student Housing. The remainder of the site to the rear was reconstructed as four blocks of new student housing for City University postgraduate students. The area to the rear is now the Alliance Club Hostel accommodation in reconditioned block.
46 -47 17th buildings likely to have originally been one house, itself one of a pair. The other one was demolished in the 20th for a new frontage to the China Inland Mission. There was originally had a front courtyard with stable blocks on the side.
52 -55 an example of speculative building in London in the 17th. It was built in 1658 and replaced a house, with a garden and orchards. It may have been built by Thomas Pidcock, and has a façade design introduced from Italy by Inigo Jones. It is said to be London's oldest surviving brick terrace. The entrance lobby to each of the two inner houses is approached by a central passage now between shops and the end houses probably also had side entrances before adjoining buildings went up. Between each pair of houses is a tiny light-well to light the staircases.
54 Home of Richard Price radical thinker and supporter of the French and American revolutions. His home became a centre for dissent.
56-61 shops built in the 1880s. This is the site of Gloucester House at one time the home of Samuel Rogers built in the 17th
Northampton Grove
Floral Place nursery in building at one time called Northampton Works, and used by Consolidated Electrical and other electrical firms.
Petherton Road.
Wide enough to accommodate the course of the New River. The New River channel had a carriage-way on either side, which accounts for the road's unusual width laid out in the 1860s, following a straight reach of the river, with one slight bend at the present Ferntower Road
Railway
In 1874 a Tunnel from Finsbury Park to Canonbury Station to relieve congestion at Canonbury Junction lines going off to Finsbury Park from NLR
Sources
Clunn. Face of London
Cosh. New River
Disused Stations. Website
Essex Lopresti. New River
London Borough of Hackney. Web site
London Borough of Islington. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
Pevsner and Cherry. London North
Robbins. North London Railway
Sugden. History of Highbury,
Thames Basin Archaeological Group. A Survey of Industrial Monuments of Greater London
Willatts. Streets of Islington
The North London Railway continues its route westwards
Post to the east Mildmay
Post to the west Aberdeen Park
This post covers only the south west corner of the square
Mildmay Grove North
Laid out in 1850. Long terraces across the deep crevasse of the North London Railway
37 Colony Mews 5 houses in what was 37h Mildmay Grove – this is part of a complex of old industrial buildings and offices. In the early 20th there was a laundry here and earlier some gardens.
Mildmay Grove South
2a Mount Refuge. First Born Church of God.
40 ½ modern glass and metal house a sequence of light filled rooms with modern furniture. By Philip Johnson and Leonie Milliner 2007
Railway Wall. The wall part of a former gent’s urinal and once boasted a painted horse, removed by Islington Council. It has been replaced by a boy with a flower. It has been claimed that this area marks the last remains of the Newington and Balls Pond Station.
Mildmay Park
Part of the estate which belonged to the Halliday/Mildmay family but sold off for building in the late19th by Sir John Mildmay. The family had had a house since the 17th on the south side of Newington Green. The grounds to the south of it stretched almost to the Balls Pond Road, and it is this area which was developed.
92 Clarendon Pub. This may currently be called The Dissenting Academy, and it was for a while The Nobody Inn.
85n Modern House by Graham Bickley
75a C.L.R.James House. This was 19th Founders Lodge and now the only remains of the Mildmay Mission - the Movement for World Evangelism - where it was used as a home and for retreats. Founders Lodge, Mildmay Centre. This was built for the Mildmay Movement . It is asymmetrical in yellow and red brick. It is now flats.
Mildmay Park Station .Opened in 1880 On the North London Railway. It stood on the east side of Mildmay Park at junction with Mildmay Grove North’s. The street buildings were designed by E.H, Horne with entrances in Mildmay Grove and Mildmay Park. It had ‘Mildmay Park Station’ and ‘North London Railway’ set in cement lettering around the top of the building and an ornamental rail round the roof. It closed in 1934 but the street building stayed in place used as a car repair workshop. It was demolished in 1987. Some parts of the platforms still remain as do the foundations of the over bridge and the street building.
Newington Green Road
Newington and Balls Pond Station. Opened in 1858 Built by the East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway to connect East London and the Docks with the London and Birmingham Railway at Camden Town. In 1870 when the line was widened from to four tracks the station was replaced by Canonbury Station on a different site.
59 The Alma. Recently closed and reopened.
98 The Weavers Arms Inn was, probably established in 1716 and rebuilt in the 1820s.
125 The Cellars Edinburgh. Mosaic floor saying ‘Billiards and Saloon Bar’. Formerly the Edinburgh Tavern. There is a Truman box sign above the corner door, possibly 1970s.
Brick boundary wall to the hospital and mission area remains
Newington Green
The Green is mentioned in 1480 and there was a small medieval settlement at Newington Green connected to the City by what is now Essex Road. It attracted affluent residents in 16th and by the 17th it had become a smart place to live and a number of new houses were built, some replacing older ones. The green was enclosed in 1742 and became an urban square and was given railings. Development followed in the 19th partly replaced by council flats between the wars and after Second World War Bombing. Today the area has a large Turkish population. The village around the green was once strongly non-conformist. Following the 1662 Act of Uniformity with a sympathetic land owner dissenting clergy came here and Mary Wollstonecraft tried to found a school here.
It is popularly thought that Henry VIII used the area for hunting and that he installed mistresses in a house to the south of the Green. The area does not seem to have been an enclosed forest in the legal sense and thus not available for hunting. Henry Percy, Duke of Northumberland, had a house here and died here in 1537. At her trial Anne Boleyn claimed to have had a contract of marriage with him and he granted his estates to the King to be handed on to family members.
Mildmay Hall – this was between Mildmay Park and Newington Green Road, south of Newington Green. This was a Conference Hall for the Mildmay Mission built in 1870 and demolished in 1959. The Deaconess House was attached.
Children’s play area behind Hathersage Court, This is on the site of Mildmay Hall. There is a memorial stone to Pennefather
Mildmay Cottage Hospital. This originally opened in 1866, was run by the nursing branch of the Mildmay Deaconess Institution, a group of Christian women led by the Vicar of St. Jude's, the Reverend William Pennefather. A new hospital was built in the centre of the compound in 1883 and called the Mildmay Memorial Cottage Hospital. In 1908 ‘Cottage’ was removed from the name. During the Great War the Hospital offered 23 of its beds to the War Office. By 1944 it treated mainly private patients. The Hospital joined the National Health Service in 1948 as part of the Archway Group. It closed in 1958 and was demolished and replaced by a council housing blocks
Hathersage Court. Local authority housing built in the 1960s on the site of the Mildmay Hospital. It is a 6 storey concrete framed block with pre-cast concrete infill panels with an exposed flint aggregate finish.
Besant Court. Local authority housing built on the site of the Mildmay Hospital in the 1950s.. Previously it was the site of the Spring Gardens Inn, built before 1725, Spring Gardens Coffee House by 1765.
9-10 Mildmay House. In 1611 William Halliday, a City Alderman built a house which was inherited by Henry Mildmay and thus it was called Mildmay House. It was later a boarding school and became the Nurses' Home in 1885. Demolished in the 1950s and is partly the site of Hathersage House.
30 Cromwell Lodge, 19th
31-32, a plain pair of houses built around 1809 with later extensions. May be built on the site of Bishop’s Place
The Bishops Palace was here until 1800 and may also be what has said to be .Henry VIII’s hunting lodge. It may also have been the home of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. A timber-framed building stood here which was probably 16th forming four sides of a courtyard and containing gilded and painted wainscotting. By the time it was demolished, it was called Bishop's Place and was divided into tenements for the poor.
Newington Green Primary School. The school fronts on to Mathias Road but on the Newington Green frontage is a plaque to the girls’ school started here by Mary Woolstonecraft.
35 may be one of six houses built in the 1690s next to a farmhouse belonging to Joan Nubler.
33-34 Mildmay Club. Thin Baroque of 1900 by Alfred Allen; over large segmental pedimented doorway small cupola. Began as Mildmay Radical club in 1888 at 36 Newington Green Road and moved to a newly built clubhouse at. 34 Newington Green in 1893. In 1930 it changed its name to Mildmay club and institute, and became nonpolitical; in the 1950s it staged weekly variety shows
35 behind projecting 19th shop fronts. A double-fronted 18th house – there has been a suggestion it is earlier, 1690, and may incorporate timber from an earlier building.
36-38 houses hidden behind projecting 19th shops. The houses date from the early 19th but may have older cores
39 Unitarian chapel. This is the earliest active Nonconformist chapel in London. It was built by in 1708 by Edward Hamson, goldsmith, for a congregation established in 1682 It has a 19th front and inside are box pews and monuments. Prominent members included Dr Richard Price, Anne Laetitia Barbauld, William Godwin Mary Wollstonecraft; Samuel Rogers, Dr Andrew Pritchard
Dissenting academy founded by Charles Morton in 1667 on the site of the Unitarian Church
40-41 Tariro House. Built as a bank in 1892 and used by Barclays. It is now flats and a care home.
41-43 Newington Green Mansions with a spirelet. Built in 1892 on the site of Monte Christo House an 18th mansion
42 The Gate. Restaurant on the ground floor of a block of Housing and health centre. Designed as a Six-storey curved comer tower by Rivington Street Studio's who won a Peabody Trust competition in 1996 for it. It is on the site of Holland or Olympic House which was a brick house belonging to the Brownswood estate, possibly dated from 1680 with a timber frame and which contained oak panelling attributed to Grinling Gibbons but years later. Demolished for factory buildings in 1965. The 18th-century iron gates and railings remained and are incorporated in the new buildings.
44-45 China Inland Mission building. Overseas Missionary Fellowship before 1964 called the China Inland Mission is an interdenominational Protestant Missionary society based in Singapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor in 1865 and built their headquarters here in 1895 with a 20th baroque screen with arched gate and open colonnade above between blocks of flats. Redeveloped in 2004 as student accommodation by Shaftesbury Student Housing. The remainder of the site to the rear was reconstructed as four blocks of new student housing for City University postgraduate students. The area to the rear is now the Alliance Club Hostel accommodation in reconditioned block.
46 -47 17th buildings likely to have originally been one house, itself one of a pair. The other one was demolished in the 20th for a new frontage to the China Inland Mission. There was originally had a front courtyard with stable blocks on the side.
52 -55 an example of speculative building in London in the 17th. It was built in 1658 and replaced a house, with a garden and orchards. It may have been built by Thomas Pidcock, and has a façade design introduced from Italy by Inigo Jones. It is said to be London's oldest surviving brick terrace. The entrance lobby to each of the two inner houses is approached by a central passage now between shops and the end houses probably also had side entrances before adjoining buildings went up. Between each pair of houses is a tiny light-well to light the staircases.
54 Home of Richard Price radical thinker and supporter of the French and American revolutions. His home became a centre for dissent.
56-61 shops built in the 1880s. This is the site of Gloucester House at one time the home of Samuel Rogers built in the 17th
Northampton Grove
Floral Place nursery in building at one time called Northampton Works, and used by Consolidated Electrical and other electrical firms.
Petherton Road.
Wide enough to accommodate the course of the New River. The New River channel had a carriage-way on either side, which accounts for the road's unusual width laid out in the 1860s, following a straight reach of the river, with one slight bend at the present Ferntower Road
Railway
In 1874 a Tunnel from Finsbury Park to Canonbury Station to relieve congestion at Canonbury Junction lines going off to Finsbury Park from NLR
Sources
Clunn. Face of London
Cosh. New River
Disused Stations. Website
Essex Lopresti. New River
London Borough of Hackney. Web site
London Borough of Islington. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
Pevsner and Cherry. London North
Robbins. North London Railway
Sugden. History of Highbury,
Thames Basin Archaeological Group. A Survey of Industrial Monuments of Greater London
Willatts. Streets of Islington
Comments