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Post to the north Clissold Park
Aberdeen Lane
Aberdeen Park
Probably after George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of
Aberdeen (1784-1860), who was first Lord of the Treasury from December 1852 to
January 1855? The land had been sold off along with the rest of the demesne of
Highbury Manor by the Colebrooke family in the 18th century and was then owned
by George Morrice, who was also tenant of 25 acres on the Highbury New Park
estate until Henry Rydon bought that in 1852. The roads of the Aberdeen Park were laid out in 1853 and building continued until 1864, with
further small houses added in the 1930s Generously laid out loop. Central
tennis courts filled in the 1930s with small houses of the bypass variegated
type. Developed from the 1850s. A generously
laid-out loop of 1853 with St Saviour at its centre.
Tennis courts, and inappropriately filled in the 1930s with small houses of the bypass variegated type.
St.Saviour’s church. Church of the Most Holy
Saviour Built 1856/66. Since 1990 Florence
Trust artists' studios.
Victorian pillar
20-26 Foreign Missions Club
Seaforth Crescent. The garden of one of Sir John's solid
Italianate houses at the southeast corner of the estate redeveloped as council
housing. architects
Darbourne and Darke,
Only two entrances were
provided to Aberdeen Park:
Victorian
pillar box,
Aberdeen Road
16 was Chapel
Aden Terrace
Start of Stoke Newington parish. Named for the British capture of Aden in
1849.
The road was never a terrace but was built as
semi-detached villas. It remains a pedestrian way. a footpath by allotments which
mark the line of the New River
continuing from Clissold Park.
New
River.
with allotment gardens on the line of the River.
notice
the suggestion of an embankment on the left-hand side.
Albion Road
Albion Road was laid out after the land was sold for building
in 1821. It forms the main road through an area developed by Thomas Cubitt
1823-39. The best of the remaining houses of this time are three-storeyed stucco
groups, with a lively rhythm of receding and projecting bays. some single
houses and groups remain. The grander houses contrast with the humbler artisan
neighbourhood to the SE, where a right grid of small streets was laid out c.
1850
Iron gates. ‘W ‘ on
them. Isaac Watts hymn writer.
Albion Pub. stately detached Italianate building. Ground floor
remodelled 1890 by W. G. Shoebridge, converted to housing 1998.
Beresford Terrace
Built by
1860
New River. Before 1870 the river made a detour westwards between Beresford Terrace and St Paul's Road, and the southern part of this may
still be traced:
Burma Road
conventional
stucco-trimmed terrace
1a Turkish Islamic Centre. cleverly fitted in behind a windowless brick wall, its glazed dome just
visible. Entrance court with reused columns
Church Walk
Half mile long. Another ancient footpath leads to
Newington Green; and to the parish church, is now blocked by Stoke Newington
School.
Clissold Crescent
shown on old
maps as Park Lane
New River. On
the right are railings at one end of a strip of allotments; a metal plate
attached to them records "The Park Lane Bridge was demolished and the road widened
June 1931". The curve of the allotments clearly indicates the old course
Ferntower Road
Laid out
later than Petherton Road
Grosvenor Avenue
Highbury New
Park continuation. A handsome detached
villa with Venetian windows flanking an
Ionic porch. Other houses replaced by
flats.
New River
crosses it. continued behind the houses of Petherton Road to cross Grosvenor
Avenue near Spring Gardens a new block
of flats There is a terrace of old properties along the south of Grosvenor Avenue but in two
places there is apparently newer building - at.127, and at 139 and 139a; old maps show a gap where 139 and 139a now stand. There
is now no indication of where the channel crossed the railway line but beyond
it, opposite the 'gap', is a curved narrow space between houses in a position
consistent with the course shown on old maps along which the New River reached
St. Paul's Road at the corner with
Was it by 127 Eves Court ran southwest and crossed
diagonally east of the present council block, which is on the site of Highbury
Park Presbyterian church. Straightened
in 1870. In the road 1860s following the
straight bit of the New River after it had been laid out again. Bend at Ferntower Road.
Spring Gardens a new block of flats.
New River criossed the road about here.
Highbury Estate. 6
acres. Will be 10 five-storey blocks. Villas destroyed by bombing. London County Council flats on their new Highbury estate.
96 Highbury Film Studios.
Athenaeum Studios. Athenaeum 1960s flats. Original 1864 Anglican Church ‘iron chapel’
became Highbury House of Commons Athenaeum 1920 became ITV then demolished in
1963.
97-119 is the earlier terrace - built before the loop in the New River was
straightened
121-137 The
old course of New River can be seen in this terrace, which was built after the
diversion had been straightened out. On easily
distinguishable from the earlier terrace
127 Eves Court –
did the New River cross here? Apparently not
1391/139b built
over what was the garden of 141 in the 1920s. Michael Graubart has counted the
houses and compared it with an old map which shows a gap where 139 and 139a now
stand. This seems to be where the New
River went through.
141 beyond
here the New River turned abruptly to cross the railway
in an shallow
aqueduct.
Therefore, the house was given a garden at the side aqueduct: the spot is
marked by a, black poplar. Thus having little rear
garden space, was given compensatory garden at the
side, and this was built over in the 1920s
Ashfield/Parkchurch/Elmfield.
Council blocks. On the site of Highbury Park Presbyterian Church.
Redevelopment finally obliterated the line of the New River till then marked by one or two garden-walls. Highbury
Park Presbyterian Church, 1863 by E. Habershon. Only the facade remains, of a
neo-Hawksmoor type, with a low
portico. The tower Italian but with a spire.
Highbury Grange
The name of the road recalls the existence to the south of
a grange of the Knights Hospitaller from 1271 to the dissolution of the
monasteries. The farm buildings were gradually appropriated for the use of the
tavern and the last known reference to a farmer is in the right of way lawsuit
of 1784.
The road to Highbury from Islington was a secluded dead
end when the first developments were built in the fields here. The famous
London speculative builder Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855), who later laid out
Belgravia and Bloomsbury and was a main contractor on the railway from London
to Brighton, was first on the scene here with one of his early enterprises. In
1820 he negotiated with his former landlords, the Hopkinsons, for use of the
meadow on the east side of Highbury Park, previously known as Cream Hall
Road. It was intended from the start as
a select residential development of suburban villas with large gardens, stables
and outbuildings, so the leases included a covenant against offensive trades.
The site lay between Newington Turning, the footpath to Stoke Newington church
now called Kelross Road, and the grounds of Highbury Barn Tavern, and Cubitt
divided it with a central access road
Mews Some 100
metres down the road a mews runs northwards along the bottom of the grounds of
the three pairs of Cubitt villas and may be seen to preserve some original
stock brick stabling, while lower down the terraces date from about 1855.
54-46. The only
remaining example is the double house leased during 1821 to John Smart, a City
silk manufacturer, and a Mr Hughes respectively.
Highbury New Park
Highbury New Park. The stately curve of a broad thoroughfare
shaded by mature plane trees which in summer discreetly preserve the privacy of
the solid Victorian mansions. We turn left and walk northwards through the
best-preserved section of the estate. In October 1850 Henry Rydon, an ex-tailor
of Finsbury Circus, owner of brickfields and small time developer, increased
the scale of his operations by acquiring this 100-acre estate. In plan the area
resembles a tall triangle, stretching from an apex at the Robinson Crusoe in
the north to the North London Railway in the south, while the east-west profile
increases irregularly until the south end touches both Highbury Grove and
Newington Green. Rydon, as developer as
well as owner of the estate, kept close control of all the planning and
employed Charles Hambridge as his factotum. The spacious and wealthy theme of Highbury New Park is closely allied to the
contemporary attempts to establish a large public park at Highbury. Although
the estate is unusual, the choice of dwellings available and its good railway
connection with the City made it attractive to mid-Victorians of solid but unspectacular means. The rate
books indicate that most of the original residents owned their own small
businesses in the City, accessible by the North London Railway (first class
fare 6d) or the Highbury to Bank omnibus, one of the fleet of 'Favourites'
first established by one Wilson. Artistic residents were singularly lacking,
perhaps preferring Hampstead. The 1861 Census shows that all but 4 of the
households had at least one servant and the wealthier ones had up to six: a
groom, cook, housemaid, parlour maid, nursemaid and nurse. As for the houses
themselves, Hambridge used plain brick for the structure, but employed carved
stone and polychrome brick for the architectural details, and sometimes
resorted to encaustic tiles to add interest to a wall. His styles range from
Venetian gothic, through Lombardic Romanesque to elegant white stuccoed
Regency, with some intrepid experiments. A 100-acre suburb was planned in 1851 by Henry Rydon Victorian
tailor - to
attract City businessmen and their families.
Built from 1853 as a long, broad tree-lined sweep lined by detached and paired villas, leading to St Augustine's
Church. Its grandeur and social aims it is comparable to the
slightly earlier Clapham Park in
South London, but here styles and
materials
are mixed with all the exuberant originality of the mid-Victorian period,
although the houses are more or less standard.
There has been much rebuilding at either end, but the central feature is well preserved, reprieved from decline from
the 1970s. Put
most up like 55. Greek round floor and
Venetian basements. Wide and leafy with
gardens behind balustraded walls. Electric villas. A tree-lined thoroughfare ending at Clissold
Park, many of the villas are as fine as those of Hamilton Terrace, St John's
Wood, and when first built must have been inhabited by people of considerable
wealth. The wide and leafy road
starts near the end of Highbury Grove. The tone is set by a row
of wealthy Italianate pairs on the side, back
beyond stuccoed balustraded garden walls, now much depleted.
Early villas of 1853-6 remain on the side. The estate was completed by various builders
from the mid 1870s; opposite the church are modest streets with terraces
instead of the crescent at first planned.
St.Augustine’s church 1870 - Ryden paid £10,000 for it.
Architects Habeshon and Brockh - never enough money for the spire. Trendy vicars have changed the inside
recently. Henry
Rydon himself lived in Highbury New Park and paid £10 000 for the erection in
1870 designed in a colourful style by the architects William Gillbee
Habershon and E.P.L. Brock for a parish whose population rose to nearly 7000 by
1888.
Church School Buildings. Down the footpath just before St Augustine's. Contemporary
96 The Athenaeum. A faceless 1960s block of flats stands on the site of the estate’s
Athenaeum. The original building with its 80-foot brick facade was built in
1864 as the temporary Anglican church, but in 1870 the 'Iron Chapel', as it was
known, was converted to be the 'Highbury House of Commons Athenaeum’. From the
commercial background of its patrons, we may patronisingly surmise that the
cultural and scientific pretensions of its habitués were less genuine than the
Almeida Street Literary and Scientific Institution in Islington, and that
musical variety evenings were the staple fare. The subsequent history of the
structure is curious: it seems likely that casualties and social change in the
First World War eclipsed its fortunes, for about 1920 it became the Highbury
Film Studios. Film making continued until the mid-1950s when ITV moved in to
make such well loved shows as Double Your Money, Take Your Pick, Noddy and
Sunday Night Theatre, but they left the building to its fate in 1963.
Curve in Highbury New Park marks the eastern boundary of
Islington.
New River.
On Sunday a press-gang took out of the New River 19 persons who were bathing
just above Highbury Barn, Islington, and carried them on board the tender.
Several others ran away without their clothes, shirts, &c.' but the 19 were
presumably too modest! In 1855 Rydon sold the two strips bordering the channel
to the New River Company who later erected iron railings to secure the water
from trespassers and accidents.
Kelross Road
Was called Newington Turning. Path to St.Mary’s church.
Bombing V2 six houses
Kelvin Road
Bombing V2 six houses
Leconfield
Road
Laid out
later than Petherton Road.
Mildmay
Estate
Built up
1850-65, lies South East of the green.
Mildmay Grove
Surprising. Laid out in 1850. Long terraces across the
deep crevasse of the North London Railway
St.Jude and St.Paul. 1855.
Tall former vicarage
Mildmay Grove South
40 ½ modern glass and zine house an intriguing
sequence of light filled rooms. Modern furniture. Philip Johnson and Leonie
Milliner 2007
Mildmay Park
Part of an estate which belonged to
the Halliday/Mildmay family but in the late19th Sir John Milday began to sell
land off. Still has some of its large
stucco-trimmed double villas with side porches
Mildmay
ParkStation 1st
January 1880.On the North London Railway. On the
east side of Mildmay Park at junction with Mildmay Grove.1934 closed but street building stayed in place. same
architectural style as earlier stations on the line. 1987 demolished. little
sign left of it.
Mildmay Library. 1954. Cheap and cheerful. Dazzling primary colours. Reclad £. 1990
by Chris Purslow, Borough Architect, in white tiles Glazed lean-to reading room added along the
back, overlooking a play area
Mildmay Tavern 1884
Synagogue in the 1880s
which closed 1930s
Newington
Newington Green
The area was built up in the c17 and was then a smart
place to live. There is an area of mid-c19 development between two old centres
at the end of Church Street.
Newington Green. Marked thus on the Ordnance Survey map of 1822 and recorded as
‘Newyngtongrene’ in 1480, 'the village green near Stoke Newington', from Middle
English ‘grene’. It is said that this area was favoured by Henry VIII for
hunting and that he installed his mistresses in a house to the south of the
Green. There was a small medieval
settlement at Newington Green, on the border of Islington and Stoke Newington,
connected to the City by what is now Essex Road. It attracted some affluent residents in c16
and early c17, and from the mid c17 a substantial number of new houses were
built, some speculatively, some replacing older houses. Smart place to live
in the 17th. The green enclosed in 1742 and had
become an urban square by 1742, when was given railings, and by the early c19
its surroundings were densely built up. Managed by Vestry of Islington Taken over from MBW 1874 Development followed, completed by 1860s
partly replaced by council flats between the wars and after 1945. Bombing. Today this area is a Turkish quarter, but the village
centred on the green was in the past a strongly non-conformist area. Following
the 1662 Act of Uniformity the lord of the manor was sympathetic to dissenting
clergy who were attracted to the hamlet. Dissenters like the young Daniel Defoe
could obtain an education here and experience less religious persecution than
in London. King Henry VIII, according to popular tradition, was in the habit of
visiting mistresses in two houses, which formerly stood, on the northwest and
south sides of the green. A reminder of this belief is the existence of a road
to the east. This is also where Mary Wollstonecraft, often described as the
first feminist, unsuccessfully tried to found a school. She wrote Vindication
of The Rights of Woman in 1792, when women were deemed to have few rights. Mary
had a hard life, including a visit to France during the Revolution, and died
giving birth to a daughter in 1797. The girl, also called Mary, is well known
today as Mary Shelley author of Frankenstein.
Gate and railings. Listed Grade II. May be at risk.
52-55 1658 nice
houses. London's oldest surviving brick terrace.
It gives a good idea of speculative building in London before the Great
Fire. There are not many houses of the
mid c17 left anywhere in London, even in so fragmentary a state as these. The ground floors were altered by shops added
c. 1880-2. Built when it was a rural hamlet.
Alliance Club,
overpowering with an Edwardian baroque screen of arch gate and open colonnade above spanning between severe blocks of flats
Bishops Palace on north side only until 1800 - Henry VIII
hunting lodge. Henry Percy, Earl of
Northumberland, stayed there. House on
the west side is 1658.
China Inland Mission.
Christian
missions based at Newington Green.
Edinburgh
Cellars.
Mosaic floor saying ‘Billiards and Saloon Bar.’
Flats on the
site of Mildmay House, unexceptional
Halliday mansion south side in 40 acres.
Housing and a health centre. Rivington Street Studio's designs won a Peabody Trust competition
in 1996 for housing. Six-storey curved comer tower with a low range facing
Victorian terraces along Albion Street. A fine gate and railings of c. 1715-20 from No. 42
Newington Green, demolished in the 1960s is to be incorporated.
Mildmay Club.
Church mission from the Mildmay Hospital, thin Baroque of 1900 by Alfred Allen;
over large segmental pedimented doorway small cupola,
home of Samuel Rogers.
Newington Green Mansions turns the corner with a spirelet. The red brick late Victorian
Stoke Newington house at corner of Ferntower Road
39 Unitarian chapel. The earliest active
Nonconformist chapel in London built when the Lord of the Manor here was
sympathetic to dissenters. The Chapel was built by a goldsmith in 1708 and
enlarged 1860. Built in 1708 by Edward Hamson, goldsmith, for
a congregation established in 1682 Enlarged 1860. c19 cemented three-bay front
with two large round-headed windows, Tuscan pilasters and a large pediment.
It includes box pews and monuments. Prominent members
included Dr Richard Price, 1723-1791,a dissenting minister and radical economic
and political writer; Mrs Anne Laetitia Barbauld , 1743-1825, poetess, editor
of gothic novels and wife of a minister;
William Godwin 1756-1836, dissenting preacher and radical philosopher;
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797, the feminist writer who married Godwin; Samuel
Rogers. 1763-1855, the banker-poet; Dr Andrew Pritchard, 1804-1882,
microbiologist and pioneer microscopist; and Thomas Cromwell. the theologian
and Islington historian
Newington Green Road
Newington and Balls Pond Station 1st September
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. It had
itself been renamed Canonbury just before it closed.
Allotments on the line used to be station.
Northampton Park
Park Cottage,
home of Mrs.Ternan and Ellen, Dickens’ girl friend
Northolme Road
St.Joan of Arc School
Petherton Road.
Attractively wide 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. Smaller houses by a local
builder, J. G. Bishop, were built here on the east part of Rydon's estate from
1868 to 1872, together with plain terraces in the roads up to Newington Green,
completed c.1876-80 by another builder, Isaac Edmundson. Trees planted in 1870
after the culvert was built. . As
late as 1870 the area was still unbuilt as far as the back gardens of Highbury
New Park on the west and Green Lanes on the east, the latter's curve marking
Islington's eastern boundary... An avenue of trees was planted down the middle
some years after the river was culverted in 1868-70.
Bombing
New River left
this road at 65 Beresford Terrace. A writer in the 1860s compared this stretch
of The New River favourably with the more polluted southern part then already
being covered over: "broader and more trimly kept . . .running between
rows of villas and neat residences, [it] skirts their gardens, expanding and
curving gracefully." The New River continued down Petherton Road along what is now a wide
central reservation running nearly the entire length of the road. Standing at the southern end of this
reservation it is apparent that the road level drops as it passes Grosvenor
Avenue and Canonbury Station, and it rises again towards the end of Wallace
Road where it joins St. Paul's Road. Old maps show that the channel turned,
along the 100ft contour, in a loop to the west. It swung right at Beresford
Terrace and continued behind the houses to cross Grosvenor Avenue
5-7 earliest
houses in Petherton Road. Built in isolation on its west side
80 Highbury
Microscopical Society
Bombing while
the new terrace on the west side, between the junctions with Leconfield Road
and Poets Road, records the site of a direct hit by a Second World War V2
flying bomb: 11 houses were totally destroyed with blast damage extending over
a 500-foot radiusimpacts of V2s on
the west side of Petherton Road,
Railway
1874 Tunnel from Finsbury Park to Canonbury Station to
relive congestion
Canonbury Junction lines going off to Finsbury Park from
NLR
Seaforth Crescent
Council housing at
the south-east corner of Aberdeen Park estate.
1982 supposed to be very nice. Open green borders with the low curved terraces.
Stoke Newington
The name of Stoke Newington denotes the new village or
town built on the borders of the wood, which once formed part of the great Middlesex forest. It became a metropolitan borough of 51,215
inhabitants, but it consisted a century ago mainly of its long High Street on
the road from London to Cambridge.
Already in 1774 it was a populous village with good houses centred round
Newington Green, a large square surrounded by lofty elm trees, which lies half
a mile to the west and is reached by Church Street and Albion Road.
Ward Locks bindery moved from Fleet Street in 1895,
Stoke Newington Common
Palaeolithic working floor. J.Withington Smith south side traced out in
the fields and gardens at the north side of the common also. Other places in London too. Many more flints of other places 2’ to 30’
below the surface. Many people saw them
and many forgeries were made. Managed by
L.C.C.
St.Michael and All Angels. 1883. Long red brick basilica.
Vicarage
Wallace Road
Canonbury station. 1st December 1870. Between Dalson Kingsland and
Highbury and Islington on the Silverlink North London Line. The East and West India Docks and Birmingham
Junction Railway had opened in 1850 to connect East London and the Docks with
the London and Birmingham Railway at Camden Town; it was re-named the North
London in 1853. At first a station was sited at Newington Green Road In 1870, when the line was widened from two
tracks to four, the station was replaced by a new one, Canonbury, at the
junction of Wallace Road, then called Douglas Road North, and Grosvenor Avenue.
The station is still in use though the handsome Italianate building has been
demolished following vandalism.
New
River. At
the time of the railway's widening the New River in this section was being straightened, piped and covered over (1868-70), and
its new pipeline down the middle of Wallace
Road was incorporated in the rebuilt railway bridge.
1
Hope Villa,
formerly Frankfort Villa, the New River's
pre-1870 alignment is seen in the long narrow garden
behind this house built 1881.
Willow Road?
Used to be called Douglas Road North.
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