The Metropolitan Cattle Market was moved here from Smithfield in 1855. There were also twelve banking houses that serviced the livestock deals carried out in cash. An Indoor Tennis Centre and Astroturf football pitch are on the site of the old animal lairs. The only remnants I can find are a sundial topped with small metal cows and the rusting metal posts of the cattle shed against a crumbling brick wall in an overgrown ditch that runs up the back of the tennis courts and the football pitch. The only thing agricultural round here now are some of the tackles in the Islington Midweek League.

The historic symmetry of this spot projects throughout the area. Barnsbury Estate has a Copenhagen House which sits on Copenhagen Street not far from the King of Denmark pub. All in honour of the Danish ambassador who took up his plague-time residence on Copenhagen Fields or it may have been some other noble Dane, nobody’s quite sure. There’s the Pleasure Garden 24 Hour Sauna and Spa on Caledonian Road maintaining the reputation for “questionable houses of entertainment”. In Edward Square just off ‘the Cally’ a poem by the poet laureate Andrew Motion which is carved in concrete talks of Romans facing Boadicea (allegedly at Battle Bridge/Kings Cross), Chartists and freedom. A huge mural adorns the wall next to the Mitre Pub in Copenhagen Street showing the Tollpuddle Martyrs demonstration (painted by Dave) and Islington Police Station sits ironically on Tollpuddle Street. Tony Blair would have had a view of the clock tower from his pre-No.10 home in Richmond Crescent.