Secret Islington Walking Tour around Canonbury

This walk takes into a magical realm just off the hustle and bustle of Upper Street Islington as we take a walking tour around the streets of Canonbury. Ed Glinert described Canonbury as ‘The best preserved and most picturesque suburb in inner London’ (The London Compendium). In The London Nobody Knows, Geoffrey Fletcher wrote that to walk from Upper Street to Canonbury Square is to ‘move into an entirely different world’.

Here are some of the points of interest on the walk:
Highbury Corner
Upper Street
Compton Terrace
Union Chapel
Compton Terrace Gardens
Hope & Anchor
Canonbury Lane
Compton Avenue & Compton Arms
Canonbury Square
Estorick Collection
27b Canonbury Square – George Orwell
17a Canonbury Square – Evelyn Waugh
Canonbury Tower
Canonbury Place
The Canonbury Tavern
Willowbridge Road
New River Path
Marquess Estate
Caldy Walk
The Marquess Pub
Essex Road – Station, Carlton Cinema, South Library, The Old Queens Head, The Winchester
Cross Street
Dagmar Passage, Dagmar Terrace – Little Angel Theatre
St. Marys Church
Kings Head Theatre
St Marys Path
Colebrooke Row – Charles Lamb
Duncan Terrace – Douglas Adams
Regents Canal – Islington Tunnel
Noel Road – Joe Orton

George Orwell plaque, Canonbury Islington
Marquess Tavern Canonbury
Canonbury Tower Islington
Canonbury Tower

Further Reading:
Canonbury Tower and Canonbury House
Books: The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Series by Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams, Prick Up Your Ears by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries ed. John Lahr, Orton the Complete Plays by Joe Orton

Filmed June 2021

Walking London’s Civil War Defences – Islington

This was a walk that I first did in 2005 and blogged about here. I’d stumbled across an article by Guy Mannes Abbott published in the Architects Association journal that linked the Civil War Parliamentary defences of London to the progressive architecture of the London Borough of Finsbury in the post-war period. The idea that the streets that I walked home in the dark each night were part of a ‘utopian enclosure’ was incredibly beguiling.

“The forts mark an area known for its spas and radical reformers and which, in the seventeenth century, Wenceslaus Hollar represented in a series of etchings showing extensive earthworks. They protected an area that would become the site of the largest and most ambitious plan ever for the social regeneration of London and which remains a paragon of what could be achieved with social housing. Spa Green, Bevin Court and Priory Green just north of Finsbury are all positive manifestations of a politically committed and revolutionarily ambitious approach to collective works, but – conscious of what there was to fight for – Tecton also produced a plan for an elaborate system of defences and network of communications with uncanny echoes of the Civil War forts.”

from ‘The Malignants trecherous and bloody plot against the Parliament and Citty of London which was by God’s providence happily prevented May 31, 1643’
from ‘The Malignants trecherous and bloody plot against the Parliament and Citty of London which was by God’s providence happily prevented May 31, 1643’

I’d been intending to make a video of this walk for my Walking Vlog series ever since starting it in 2015, but had delayed and delayed as I considered that a true walk of London’s Civil War defences should at least cover the section north of the Thames from Wapping in the East to Pimilico in the West (where the Lillington Gardens Estate that stands of the site of the fort has an oddly fortress-like appearance). But then, first I encountered the southern ‘line of communication’ while walking the River Neckinger, followed by reading an article in London Archaeologist debating the location of the defences around Whitechapel. I was faced by an edifice of research that was difficult to penetrate.

Eventually, the landscape called me. The original walk of the Finsbury Forts was too rich not to capture on camera, and so I headed out on the day the clocks went back to retrace my steps from 17 years ago. Picking up the traces of that walk on the edge of the City of London I headed up Goswell Road to Mount Mills and then followed the deep entrenchment across Northampton Square to the site of Waterfield Fort, now occupied by Spa Green Estate. From here I progressed down Rosebery Ave to Mount Pleasant Fort before ascending Amwell Street to the Fort Royal which occupied a commanding position on the crest of the hill at Claremont Square near the Angel Islington.

Walking from Stratford to Islington via Hackney with Andrew & Eden Kötting

Andrew and Eden Kötting’s exhibition at New Art Projects, Hackney – Excuse me, can you help me please? I’m terribly worried, offered the perfect rationale for a joint stroll. The moment I saw the show announced I knew it would be the focus point in a walk. Being joined by Andrew and Eden themselves turned this into a kind of dream walk.

We met at the old Stratford Centre, outside Burger King and beneath the shoal of metallic fish installed to mask the old Stratford from the Olympic hoards. Passing through Westfield to the Waterworks River, Andrew called down to the people riding the swan pedaloes and reminsced about the journey he made from Hastings to Stratford with Iain Sinclair on just such a craft named Edith for his film Swandown. That was just before the London Olympics when passage along the Park’s waterways was prohibited. Andrew’s onward journey to the Islington tunnel followed the route our walk would take – along the Hertford Union Canal and then the Regent’s Canal.

swan pedalo on the Waterworks River, Stratford
Andrew Kötting and Eden Kötting in Victoria Park Hackney, July 2022
Victoria Park, Hackney

The show at New Art Projects, is a dive into the world that Andrew and Eden have created in their Hastings studio. Walls of collages and large paintings, 3D heads made from Eden’s drawings, a screening room presenting the film Diseased and Disorderly. I then donned a VR headset which transported me Andrew’s Pyrenean farmhouse, a ‘memory hovel ‘ (as opposed to Tony Judt’s Memory Chalet), where you are led through a series of rooms and ultimately out onto a pyrenean mountain top. It was an incredible experience.

Leaving the gallery space and Andrew and Eden I took a stroll down Broadway Market, the first time in a number of years since it became seen as the epicentre of gentrified Hackney. F. Cooke’s Pie and Mash shop was shuttered up, closed for good, a new addition to the Dead Pie Shop Trail. Dropping back onto the Regent’s Canal I drifted towards Islington, taking a small detour to pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock at Gainsborough Studios, before ending the walk at the mouth of the Islington Tunnel.

F.Cooke Pie and Mash Shop Broadway Market, Hackney
Broadway Market
City Road Basin, Islington on the Regent's Canal
City Road Basin

Excuse me, can you help me please? I’m terribly worried – runs at New Art Projects, 6D Sheep Lane
London E8 4QS, until 31st July

Northbound – walk from St.Pauls through Islington to Highgate

It was an odd walk in a way, but one that has stayed with me over the Christmas period since. There was just the desire to walk – to be out. I knew where I didn’t fancy and with only around 3 hours of daylight I wanted options for walking in the dark. The pivotal moment was at the ticket barriers – east or west.

Roman Wall City of London

I alighted at St.Pauls and let old instincts guide me. A look at the Roman London Wall in Noble Street, the on to Golden Lane Estate where there was a recent protest against the redevelopment of former Police accommodation into a block of luxury flats.

Golden Lane development

Up Goswell Road and across Northampton Square, one variation on my daily walk home from work at the South Bank when I lived up at the Angel, and also our route to Ironmonger Row Baths. Andrew Kötting’s expression ‘the noise of memory’ came to mind, when there is so much memory attached to an area that it almost becomes overwhelming. This territory on the slopes of Islington and Finsbury is like that for me, the sound intensifying as I made my way up Chapel Market, the Christmas tree seller having a furious argument down the phone kicking empty boxes. There’s a For Let sign above the iconic Manze’s pie and mash shop, the one featured in The London Nobody Knows, let’s hope I don’t add to the ‘Dead Pie Shop Trail’*.

Manze's Pie and Mash Chapel Market

On through Barnsbury to Holloway Road as the sun starts hitting the glorious Holloway Odeon. I sorely tempted to give up the ghost and while away an hour or two in the Coronet – a beautiful old cinema converted into a Wetherspoons. Something keeps me plodding on towards the Northern Heights, an image I’d conjured in my head at the beginning of the walk of ending up in Highgate.

Coronet Holloway Road

Faced with the Archway Tavern I think of Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity that I first read some 20 years ago when music played a far bigger part in my life than it does today and I would routinely pass a happy hour thumbing through racks of vinyl on dusty old record shops. At the time I felt the Archway Tavern must have been the pub/venue in the book where the record shop staff watch bands. The shop, Championship Vinyl, is located in on Seven Sisters Road (so is the Harry Lauder actually the World’s End instead?). There’s a secondhand book stall in front of the old Archway Tavern and sure enough they have a slightly battered copy of High Fidelity that I pick up for £2.50 and have been reading over Christmas. It’s funny how the book has aged in that time.

Gatehouse Highgate

Highgate Village was every bit as festive as hoped with chains of Christmas lights looped across the High Street. I make for the Gatehouse, an old coaching inn with a resident ghost. I tell the young barman about the spectral guest that haunts the pub and he fixes me with a look of disbelief. ‘It’s true’, I say, ‘look out for it when you’re locking up later.’

 

– – – – – – – – – – – –

* this was an essay I wrote for Jake Green’s photobook documenting the surviving Pie and Mash shops in London. My essay was a walk linking sites of several former Pie and Mash shops. There are copies of the book in each of the remaining Pie and Mash Shops in London. Get yourself a double pie and mash and settle down with a copy.

Return to Caledonian Park, Islington

Caledonian Park

I first spotted the top of the clock tower in Caledonian Park from the street that ran in front of the estate where I lived on Barnsbury Road. A tantilising white spike rising above tree canopies spied on the way to take my toddler to the swings in Barnard Park. All roads led to that spot from the high ridge running north from Pentonville Road. Copenhagen Street ran down one side of the estate, on which stood the King of Denmark Pub, one of the estate blocks was even called Copenhagen House – all in honour of the illustrious history of the area in the shadow of the clock tower that had previously gained notoriety as Copenhagen Fields, named after a forgotten Danish noble.

The tower stands on a hillock rising from a sacred plain that stretches across the floor of the Fleet Valley reaching out at the foot of London’s Northern Heights. This is where William Blake saw the golden pillars of Jerusalem in his ‘drama of the psyche’,

The fields from Islington to Marylebone,


To Primrose Hill and St John’s Wood,


Were builded over with pillars of gold,


And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.

Blake the Druid having visions of Jesus wandering in the lush pastures now built over, and being rebuilt once again transitioning from puking out the stink of noxious trades and railway smog to new blocks built of solid Capital rising amongst the fields of Victorian houses and council estates. You need to look carefully for the gold pillars of Jerusalem. The poet’s feet in not so ancient time must have walked those same Barnsbury Streets laden with myths emanating from the springs gurgling to the surface of the pleasure gardens which in turn had taken the place of oak groves and it is believed, Merlin’s Cave (also the name of a 70’s prog rock venue near where the cave is said to have been).

Market Estate

Market Estate 2004

I’d carried out a survey of sorts 10 years ago, baby strapped to my chest, old Olympus 35mm camera to make the visual record of the trip. The local newspapers had been full of horror stories about the area. The decaying Market Estate that wrapped itself around the three sides of Caledonian Park had been declared ‘Hell’ by its residents, a young boy, Christopher Pullen, had been killed by a falling door. There were reports of collapsed ceilings, exposed wires, boarded-up windows. Sex workers pushed north by the Kings Cross redevelopment patrolled Market Road and operated amongst the park undergrowth. Two prostitutes from this beat had been brutally murdered. A £41million regeneration scheme had been drawn up to demolish the estate, improve the park and restore “the historic symmetry of the site”, reopening the north-south axis.

New Clocktower Place Islington

New Clocktower Place 2015

I set out again on a sultry May Day weekend, following the footsteps in reverse of the huge demonstration in support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs that had mustered on Copenhagen Fields in 1834 before the 40,000 protestors headed for Whitehall. The martyrs are commemorated with a large mural on Copenhagen Street and the local police station sits ironically in Tolpuddle Street. In 1795 an enormous gathering of Chartists, 100,000 strong, met at the Copenhagen House pleasure garden. A radical spirit permeates through the damp soil here working its way down the valley to Holford Square where Lenin plotted the Russian Revolution.

Today the atmosphere is muted. There is the bleak humour of the Breakout Café opposite the gates of Pentonville Prison. Market Road appears free of streetwalkers replaced by students ambling along the pavement to the ‘Prodigy urban student living’. The park where the sex workers plied their trade is now the scene of picnicking families and gentle kickabouts. Hawthorn blossom drapes over the Victorian railings that had contained the vast Metropolitan Cattle Market that moved here from Smithfield in 1855 – the ‘smooth-field’ itself a place of medieval vision and congregation. Is there a subconscious need to slaughter cattle on sacred ground?

Market Estate Mural

Market Estate Mural 2004

The clock tower had been built for the cattle market both of which had been overshadowed in their day by the famous Pedlers Market. It was considered one of the great wonders of London. The topographer HV Morton described the scene in his 1925 book The Heart of London – a friend picks up an Egyptian Mummy, Morton is offered a human skeleton for 10 shillings. The painter Walter Sickert proclaimed it his idea of heaven. A fella by the name of Jack Cohen had a stall that by the terrible magick of this zone became Tesco supermarket.

The Lamb New North Road
After the Second World War there were no signs of the 2000+ market stalls and the loud banter of the traders. Robert Colville describes a state of “weed-covered dereliction” in 1951 with the four grand market Gin Palaces looking “gaunt”. None of the three that remain still trade as boozers. The White Horse and The Lion have been converted to residential while The Lamb has progressed from “gaunt” to abandoned, aluminium grills filling in the gaps between the wrought iron filigree that adorns the entrances. It’s difficult to summon up the clamour of the masses that flocked here for political gatherings and market trading. The only people by the still standing market gates are a couple with a toddler scuttling over the gravel path on a scooter.

IMG_5770
The builders of the new housing that has replaced the Market Estate – Parkview, have conceded defeat to the resonance of the Clock Tower and opened up that north-south axis, the low-rise blocks folding back discreetly trying to stay out of view. The failed modernist development of the previous scheme had attempted to contain and frame the tower at one end of a wide-open cracked paving-slabbed piazza. The beautiful mural depicting the heyday of the Caledonian Market didn’t even want to be there anymore when I last visited and was peeling off the wall in a bid for escape. The power of the clock tower, and the final acknowledgement from the planners that the estate was an architectural mistake, smashed those Le Corbusier inspired concrete pillars to the ground. A street name commemorates the short life of Christopher Pullen.

IMG_5711
York Way flops over the apex of the rising ground at one end of the park and estate where the surviving Corporation of London blocks sail the skyline. This ancient thoroughfare previously known as Maiden Lane that EO Gordon, a century after Blake, dreamt linked the Pen Ton Mound near Copenhagen Street with its sister Holy site on Parliament Hill, and saw druid ceremonials process northwards to celebrate the solstices. In this vision York Way was one of the principle roads not of a New Jerusalem but a New Troy built by the war refugee Brutus. It now leads to a New Kings Cross.

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This article was originally published in Stepz psychogeography zine which can be downloaded here

Cryptic Symbols of London #2 – Islington

West Library on Thornhill Square, Islington. One of the libraries built for the borough by Scottish-American Industrialist Andrew Carnegie. But what does this stone pattern mean?
Is it some sort of Masonic guff? A Cathar Labyrinth pointing the way to the Holy Grail. Or perhaps just a nice pattern.

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Rackets in Islington

Found the following quote about the playing of Rackets at pleasure grounds in Islington:
“In his Book of Sports and Mirror of Life published by Pierce Egan in 1832, there is a long description of rackets mentioning several open rackets courts other than the King’s Bench and the Fleet. One of these was at the Belvedere Tavern, Pentonville, where most of the Open Court Championships were played, amongst others in London (all public houses); the Eagle Tavern on the City Road, The White Bear Kennington, White Conduit House, the Rosemary Branch Peckham. ”
They do have table football and salsa lessons at Clockwork, which is what the Belvedere Tavern has become, but you’d struggle to find room for a game of Rackets.
http://www.rackets-online.co.uk/history.asp?keyfld=1

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