Canonbury

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Abbots Close?

Almorah Road

Housing on an old triangular church site.  A mannered groupwith two tall monopitch-roofed wings linked by a low communitycentre.

Alwyne Villas

4a old summerhouse   1526 and Prior Bolton’s rebus – shows was the garden area of Canonbury House

Alwyne Place

The later houses have lush naturalistic foliagedecoration to doorcases and window guards.

16 One older house, three bays, early c18.

Alwyne Road

Especially grand Italianate examples where the gardens back on to the New River.

7 Tudor summerhouse stuccoed beside it

37 The New River curves around thc garden, the trees and sky are big, you could be in the country. Clipped box, holly and yew keep things in order, a line-up of pots reclaim space and strong colours. Hidden formal garden; old-fashioned roses along the river.

Alwyne Square

A confined space enclosed by streets. In 1857 there began the building of an irregular circle of villas in gardens named Canonbury Park Square. In 1879, doubtless to end an irritating confusion it was renamed Alwyne Square, using one of the Marquess's subsidiary family name. There was an agreement to make three new roads in the still open space between Canonbury Tavern and the New River. The layouts were to be completed within 21 years. In December 1857 be obtained permission to build under the same agreement on the land abutting on Canonbury North, and the cul-de-sac square was built in l859. By agreement with the Marquess' Hil1 sold his development for £2,400, to Henry Witten, a stockbroker, of 5 Alwyne Road. Witten had responsibility for building, and the new square. The proposed square was of groups forming 21 large villas. However the houses and adjoining streets were partly destroyed by bombing and like Canonbury Park South, the square was rebuilt in 1954 in a style designed by Western Ground Rents' surveyor Nash. The central area now, blocks of flats and regency style houses.

Balls Pond Road

Recorded thus in 1841, so called from a spot marked Balls Pond on the Ordnance Survey map of 1822. The large pond here - surviving until the early 19th century -  was named from John Ball who lived near Newington Green in the 17^th century and owned a pub. Shooting rights on the pond.

St.Paul’s Church is like St.John’s, Holloway Road - similar to the point of confusion. Has a vaulted tower hall. Converted to a Steiner school 1999.  1826-8 by Barry.  The Commissioners rejected design by Basem, and told Barry to reproduce his design for John.  The arcade, clerestory and ceiling also largely tall The only change which was deliberately made is that St Paul has a tower to mark the comer of Essex Road, with a vaulted tower hall inside which appears above the blind arcaded screen that forms the reredos at the back of the shallow chancel recess

St.Paul like St.John’s, Holloway Road, similar to the point of confusion.  Vaulted tower hall – and tower sited for the corner of Essex Road. Under conversion to a Steiner School.

St.Paul’s Shrubberies area of Barr Nurseries

Turnpike at St.Paul’s Road corner

146,

175-191 Prospect Place

198 formerly St.Paul’s Mansions. Beehive trademark of builders Studds and Sons of 1891,

212-5 Banning blacksmiths

233-261 North Place

Canonbury

Means 'manor of the canons'—namely those of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, to whom the land was granted in 1253 by Ralph de Berners  The formation of manorial names by the addition of -bury is frequently found in Middlesex. ‘Canonesbury’ 1373, ‘Canonbury al. Canbury’ 1570.

Canonbury Grove

Street-names in the vicinity of Canonbury House recall the former manor20 and its owners the Spencer Compton family. Marquesses of Northampton. .Canonbury Grove, dating from 1823, was for a time known as Willow Cottages    and Willow Terrace;

New River from here to Stoke Newington. There was a loop here in the original course, which can still be seen.  The houses overlook the river with irregular terraces of two and three storeys, c. 1825,by Richard Laycock. Here almost half a mile of the New River remained an open water-channeluntil 1946 when it was terminated at Stoke Newington. Converted into apark, this is now the only section in Islington with a continuous stretch ofwater.Used to be called Willow Cottages and Willow Terrace. In these open fields between Fowler House and Canonbury House theriver originally took its last loop, the "Horse Shoe", straightened in 1823 tofacilitate laying out streets for the development of Canonbury Fields. Withinthe tiny curve, which is all that remains of the loop, the small circular brickbuilding often referred to as "Jacobean" is more likely late 18th century.It may have been used by a linesman working on the New River.

13-20 towering flat bowsat each end.

27-29 Asymmetrical pair.  . They date from 1850

Canonbury Park

Street-names in the vicinity of Canonbury House recall the former manor20 and its owners the Compton family. Marquesses of Northampton. Beyond Canonbury Grove were fields until in the 1850s Canonbury Park South was built

St.Stephen 1858 thin & papery. Yellow brick with crude early English motifs. Crazily pierced bell opening bombed. By Inwood & Clifton.  A starved octagonal tower of stone with spire and flying buttresses detail was lost in damage.  The nave was lengthed in 1850 and side windows altered by Gough, who added porches since removed.  Reconstructed after war damage A. Llewellyn Smith and A. W. Waters, 1957-8; the interior turned with new vestries and chapel behind the altar jazzed up by a neo-Baroque wall painting Martyrdom of Stephen by Brian Thomas.  Opposite, a stained glass window by Carl.  Edwards, above the late c19 reredos which is the trace of the original church left inside.

Halls

Vicarage 1968-74 by Maurice Taylor, quite a bold group behind the church

Canonbury Park North

Here development was begun in 1837 by Charles Hamor Hill and took the form of villas in a more spacious setting.  First impressions, though, are an outer-suburbia, because of the large number of small post-war houses and blocks of flats.  Has large unspoilt paired villas of the 1840s.

Canonbury Park South

Here development  was begun in 1837 by Charles Hamor Hill and took the form  of villas in a more spacious setting.  First impressions, though, are an outer-suburbia, because of the large number of small post-war  houses and blocks of flats.  smaller houses on the side;

50-52 has stuccoedpilasters.

44 Myddleton Cottage of 1850-2, is rustic Italian in yellow and red brick,

40-42 is given a formalItalianate air by a shared triple-arched loggia-cum-porch and heavy eaves cornice.

Canonbury Street

Runs along the line of part of Frog Lane, the old road from London to Highbury.

On Essex Road corner was a piano factory

Canonbury Terrace

George Livesey born l834.

Clarendon Way?

Holy Trinity 1859.

Douglas Road

Beyond Canonbury Grove were fields until in the 1850s Douglas Road was built. Most of the former's villas survive,with post-war infilling, but now incorporated into Darborne& Darke's Marquess Road estate. older maps show Douglas Road continuing to St. Paul's Road but recent building work has shortened it

New River. Here almost half a mile of the New River remained an open water-channeluntil 1946 when it was terminated at Stoke Newington. Converted into apark, this is now the only section in Islington with a continuous stretch ofwater.Built in the 1850s.  Water channel re-dug in the 1970s

40 slotted into a 20-ft gap between the Marquesspub and a plain terrace, a glass sliver of a house by FutureSystems, Jan Kaplicky, Amanda Levete, 1993-4.  Not a glass boxon a spacious suburban site, like the Hopkins' in Hampstead but a glass version of theurban three-storey houses that surround it.  The back is a slope ofplate glass, frameless like Foster's Faber building onwhich Kaplicky worked.  It forms a triangular envelope with thefront wall, which is predominantly of glass bricks.  Inside, the envelope is interruptedonly by metal staircases to three living and bedroom decks and by'the freestanding service core.

40 glass sliver of a house 1993

Downham Road

Downham Court

Southgate Court

The Ridge

96

98

Elmore Street

Was James Street.  Much of Thomas Scott's land along the Lower Road towards Ball's Pond was dug up to become extensive brick-fields – which were here.  The 1819 rate books show only five houses here, three of them occupied two empty' 1821 Scott’s name rated for Cables andland - the latter doubtless the brick-field site

Englefield Road

Perkins Market In 1836 Mr John Perkins, a Surrey gentleman, established a 15-acre site on fields' in an attempt to divert the cattle trade from Smithfield and thus end the squalid invasion of herds of beasts through centralLondon.  The City’s and landowners’ vested interests and when Smithfield was at last moved 20 years later defeated him, an initial attempt to revivePerkins's market (1855) was abandoned, and it moved instead to CopenhagenFields.  Perkins's site was shortly laid out as Northchurch, Englefield, and Ockendon Roads. 

151 non-ferrous Coldbath Foundry Ltd.

Baths.  1932. A bit art deco.  Not in use

Essex Road

Essex Road was originally ‘Lower Road’.

Essex Road Station. 14^th February 1904. Between Highbury and Islington and Old Street on Great Northern Railway. Built by the Great Northern and City Railway on its underground route between  Finsbury Park and is station at Moorgate.  . It had 16’ diameter tunnels to take main line stock and Great Northern Line trains to the City. In 1913 it was taken over by the Metropolitan Railway and then became part of the underground as the Northern Line. In 1922 the name was changed to ‘Canonbury and Essex Road’ . In 1939 work had been done as part of the Northern Heights scheme, which was then abandoned. So remained as part of the Northern Line. Underused and neglected. In 1975 the Northern Line closed it and the station transferred to British Rail and in 1976 it reopened for main line trains from Finsbury Park to Moorgate. By comparison with other underground stations the station's surface building is nondescript and unremarkable. It was never modernised and access to the platforms is by  or a dimly lit spiral staircase.

366 Elena Hotel. A shop with ‘Jays’ on the top and fancy ironwork

384-400 Mercers’ House 1988 bold group for the Mercers’ Company Housing Association. Inspired by Edwardian Free Style Mansion Block.

161 Mecca bingo is an old cinema with Egyptian motifs

292 was a ‘Palladian floor cloth factory’. Owned by Samuel Ridley and then was a beer bottling factory. Then Islington Planning Department.  Ridleys had been built orThomas Scott s land in 1812, originally for Mr W. Weaver, and then passed to CharlesPugsley, and in 1819 was bought by Ridley, one of the trustees of St Mary's parishand opened as a floor-cloth manufactory.  Ridley, described variously as "upholstererworksman and floorcloth manufacturer", and subsequently his son, held it in successive partnerships - with Ellington and Whitley - until 1893.  It was then acquired byMr A. Probyn, a beer bottler, whose own firm, founded in 1791, continued here until 1958 when Foster & Sons became Foster Probyn Ltd In1962 the family brewers Young & Co. took over, but shortly outgrew the premisesand in 1972 removed to Wandsworth.  Islington Council took over and restored the exterior and converted the building for the Borough.  The tall four-storey Palladian building, pedimented andbalustraded above an Ionic pilastered front, was originally without openings abovethe circular-headed windows on the ground floor, except for a single thermal window just below the parapet.  It was disfigured, however, by a mass of writtenadvertisement all over its blank walls, with Ridley's name at the top in place of afrieze, and a string of the items which might issue from its interior to customers order: "Virander Awnings and Portable Rooms", to say nothing of orders for theRoyal Family.  In this century, when it was a bottling factory, the ugly lettering hadgiven way to two picturesque giant ale and beer bottles, one on either side.  At itsrestoration, many people saw these removed with some regret.  It has now beenprovided with Georgian-style windows on the first and second floors, and theclassical porch, which formerly adorned the entrance, has long been removed.  Thebalustrade adorned with stone balls has fortunately survived.

Used to be called Lower Street

Cattle market was founded 1833 by John Bletchingly and took place between Essex Road and Balls Pond to the east.  There was a brick wall on all sides and large sheds.  It closed quite quickly

Corner of New North Road was a bomb site – later covered in L.C.C. flats

St.Matthew’s church. Asymmetrically placed with a thin spire.

294-300 Barrossa Crescent In 1822 these six houses are name,Barossa Place of which one is owned by Thomas Wontner of the new TibbertonSquare and Samuel Ridley's linoleum manufactory appears Ridley moved to a villa in Barossa Place, next door to his works and just short ofthe brickfields.  The misspelling may not have been Ridley's but that of C. Barrow, a keen local water-colourist who assiduously if pedestrianly recorded many Islington buildings in 1824 and Barossa Place consisted of half-a-dozen pretty bow-fronted semi-detached with small gardens in front, named after a Thomas Barossa.

294 Ridley's houseBarossa Lodge.  A contributor to the Sydney Morning HeraldSeptember 1961 (Edward Robinson) recalled living there with his father, Mal;Joseph Robinson, an Irish doctor, from 1906-1911, when the house had a lion’s-head knocker, bell-pull, and large lamp above, with a brass speaking-tubewhich connected with his father's bedroom.  This contraption was known asMedical Man's Midnight Friend.  The house was full of ornaments brought by his father from India, and in the back garden among other joys a century-old mulberry tree.  Returning to his boyhood home in 1961 was a melancholy experience: the house abandoned, dirty, peeling paint and wallpaper, the window veranda gone - fallen down in the blitz, said a kindly old lady he met there.  Of the mulberry only a stump remained.  "No willow tree, either, no lawn, nogravel paths, no conservatory, no strawberry beds.  Nothing but an ugly factory building which had taken over half the garden.”  In 1962 this dismal saga ended with demolition of the four houses, to be replacedby considerably higher Council flats sited without reference to the street-line. 

246-90 Annett’s Crescent 1822-6.  The stylish little Annett's Crescent of 23 houses is unique in Islington, if notaltogether.  The Lower Road, acquired by Thomas James Annett from the landowner Thomas Scott, close to the New North Road, built it on a strip of land.  Thearchitect was William Burnell Hue, of whom practically nothing is known save thatfrom 1801—9 he was a pupil or assistant of William Jupp, junior, who was architect tofour City Companies and also district surveyor to several east London parishes.  When Annett's Crescent was begun Hue was living in Bloomsbury, and isrecorded as having designed the "grand quadrangle" in front of Carlton House.  HisIslington crescent certainly has touches of a rather Cubitt-like ingenuity.  A Plan of 1805/6 shows one large meadow of Scott's as extending south an old tea garden at the extreme limit—of the field a tiny sliver of land is marked off, which was later to accommodateAnnett s Crescent.  The stratum of red or brickmaker's clay occurring below Islington proved lucrative in the great 1820s building boom.  The crescent is first named' with three houses, all empty and evidently new by 1825/6 these are occupied, and seven more are built.  This far-flung Islington outpost, bordering on the country, took on a curiouslyindustrial aspect with its brickfield and several factories.  All in all it is gratifying that Annett's Crescent has survived through the chequered 'fortunes of this part of Essex Road.  In the 1970s the Council rescued and restored the houses, and rehabilitated the strip of garden in front.  The latest London maps spellthe name "Annette Crescent,” which, if not a careless misreading, ranks with thebrewers' irrelevant alterations of the traditional names of old pubs.  The order of building Annett's Crescent seems to have been centre first (threehouses), then pavilion ends, then infilling the rest.  The crescent is in symmetricalterrace-form; the three centre houses slightly advanced, with 'pavilion' blocks ofthree at each end, the outermost houses with side entrances.  The houses are stuccoed throughout, ground floors in simulated ashlar,with all ground-floor features round-headed.  Front door and window positions arereversed at the house near the centre, making a lopsided effect.  Unusually for Islington the upper floors have single windows, in shallow segmental recesses, with narrow cill bands between and flat parapet above, originallybalustraded.  First-floor windows are 4-light; floor-length, with simple window-guards, and the top floor — uniquely for the area — are small casements with marginpanes.  The pavilion ends have balconies with unusual decorative wheel-like motifs.  Fanlights are simple, circle and flat teardrop; most ground-floor glazing is nowplain.  Altogether Annett's Crescent resembles no other contemporary survivals inIslington, except some of Cubitt's to a certain extent, like Manchester Terracethough some of the early surrounding streets havenice variants on the terrace form, such as Rotherfield Street, Annett's is the only early crescent in the parish.

 294's has a smallextension.

Attractive stucco

Incongruous cheap metal cladding conversion of car parking to industrial space by the Borough Architect

Sickert Court – careful refurbishment by the Borough

Grange Grove

Part of Frog Lane – the old road from London to Highbury.  By L. de Soissons Partnership, planned in 1946.  This was pan of an ambitious rebuilding programme by the Northampton Estate which was not continued, but which attracted the middle classes back to the by then run-down neighbourhood

Greenman Street

Was Greenman Lane, named after an old alehouse

Peabody Square.  George Peabody, merchant banker and philanthropist, who by his own effortsbecame rich and successful, was an American born in Massachusetts in 1795 of poorparents.  He lived in London from 1837 until his death in 1869, and in 1862, by a giftof £150,000 to form the Peabody Donation Fund towards the building of housing for the poor he initiated what was to becomeLondon's largest housing trust.  Peabody Square, with Peabody House, was the second suchtenement to be erected after the original pattern by H. A. Darbishire, in 1866.  It was the earliest attempt in Islington to provide proper housing for the working class in place of its worst slums.  The object was to create cheap, clean and properly drainedapartments, and although the building style was uncompromisingly dour, with greybrick walls, factory-like segmental windows, lowering eaves and heavy chimney-stacks, the amenities provided made the accommodation greatly sought-after as anescape from inhuman slums and rookeries.  After the Second World War new Peabody properties were built, and older blocksby degrees converted and modernised - Islington's in 1965.  After the 1974 HousingAct, which gave official recognition to the voluntary sector in housing, the DonationFund reverted to its original role as a general charity, continuing to administer theexisting houses, while a housing association was formed to provide new buildings.  In1990 a general Estate Renewal Programme was launched, with the object of spending some $200 million on modernisation of the now ageing buildings over thecoming decade.  The old paternalist approach has given way to one of more partnership withtenants, and a Community Fund finances wider-based community projects.  The siteThe Greenman Street 'square' was built on the site of Ward's Place, popularly knownas "King John's Place", and by a "vulgar tradition" believed to be oneof that King's palaces: a low, rambling building, part timber-framed, with a gable atone end and a wide bay at the other.  Later Sir Robert Dude, a Lord Mayor who died in 1634, probably occupied it and the initials HD over the door might havereferred to his son.  Sir Hugh.  In the 18th century it was rented byDr Robert Poole as an inoculation hospital, and later became a branch of his ColdbathFields Smallpox Hospital.  From the 1760s it was used as a dissenters' chapel, then asthe parish workhouse, and later still as a soap manufactory.  It ended its days as aworkmen's tenement, and was demolished in 1800.  The immediate area became oneof mean hovels and decaying cottages, including one called "Sun Row,” and a mazeof church schools and Ragged School buildings.  Peabody Buildings occupied a larger area than the site of this old mansion, and forits erection a number of other decaying tenements, such as Mary Row and AlbertPlace, were demolished.  Many would have been the run-down cottages of ancillarycraftsmen to the watch and clock trades, traditionally established in narrow streetsoff the Lower Road.  The Buildings are four long, freestanding, five-storey blocks ranged round an open square.  In the centre was placed a large clock-tower-style 'monument', sinceremoved.  The design adopted here, as in the other early Peabody estates might almost be termedcollege staircase' - each stair giving access to sets of rooms, in this case two or three flats.  Each staircase had a cold-water sink and WC, and each block a communal laundry - model facilities for the time.  All flats, ranging from one to four rooms, had arange for heating and cooking, a water-boiler, cupboards and a coal store.  The'square' plan, allowing for a central play space, was an improvement on the morecramped proto-example at Spitalfields, completed a year earlier.  A great improvement on current housing for its amenities, visually its massiveslabs loomed menacingly over the low, often decaying housing of its surroundings.  Grim and drab though the prison-like blocks appear, they have a certain dignity, andexpress vividly the philanthropy of their day. 

Baths built on the site of hat manufacturer, Thomas Wontner’s mansion

Halliford Street

Plain stucco terraces.  Returns towards Essex Road, terraces of the 1840s, with Ionic and Tuscanporches

Marquess Estate

Takes up almost the whole of the corner of Canonbury.  It is chiefly the work of Darbourne Darke from 1966 to 1976, for Islington Borough Council, butbids some older council flats.  It was Islington's first big estateowing the creation of the larger boroughs under the GLC, and marked the council's turn away from high-rise housing but not from large-scale and very high-density development, which proved a nightmare to manage.  Most of the housing consists of terrace housesl their own small gardens rather than flats, but these are piled up like irregular ziggurats over garaging, with a complicated system of spaces and steps which, though picturesque, retain many of the disadvantages of conventional deck-access schemes.  One-storeyedpeople's flats are ingeniously sited above the houses, approachedlifts.  They have their own front doors opening on to upper-leveln-air streets.  The materials are friendly brick and slate hangingthough here the brick is a gloomy brown.  Structuring of the over-complex plan was begun in 1979 by Shepheard Epstein Hunter, with the aim of breaking the estate down

Marquess Road

New River Walk. Opened by Herbert Morrison 1954. Hut half way along may have been MBW owned -  a circular brick building which probably the linesman’s shelter. From Canonbury Road the course is dry but by Astey's Row there is a children’s playground and paddling pool. Public Toilets at Essex Road beside Thatched House pub. Old course still, River went underground here. Another ribbon-thin strip of garden, this one flanking a river - or, rather, the remains of a 38-mile long aqueduct built in the early seventeenth century to bring fresh drinking water to London from Hertfordshire. The Islington stretch around Canonbury Grove was restored in 1996-8 by local residents, and is extremely pretty and peaceful. Specimen trees such as Liquidambar styraciflua and ornamental viburnums mingle with weeping willows and shrubby elders, while lysimachia and hostas spring up among the self-sown valerian, teasels and flag iris. There's a charming little round tiled house for the linesman who looked after the waterway and ensured that the water remained clean - sad to say, he is much in need again today. Worn rocks like those in the Astey's Row Rock Garden create an almost Japanese atmosphere in places. The gardens get less horticultural in flavour the nearer you get to Balls Pond Road. Check out the gardens of the large villas opposite, many of which back on to the area. Largest open space near Marquess Estate

Flats by Monson 1950s

Marquess pub.  1848. With bold pilastered facades, part of Wagstaffe'sdevelopment.  Stylish.

Willow Bridge

Housing - ok.  Looks nice with the New River

Mildmay

He was a Judge of Charles I’s time who married the daughter of Alderman Halliday.

Bombing

New River Walk. Opened by Herbert Morrison 1954.  There is a hut half way along which may have been owned by the Metropolitan Board of Works.  There is also a circular brick building which probably the linesman’s shelter.  From Canonbury Road the course is dry but by Astey’s Row there is a children’s playground and paddling pool.  There were Public Toilets at Essex Road beside the Thatched House Pub. This is the old course – the River went underground here.

Mildmay Avenue

V2 at the junction of Mildmay Avenue with Mildmay Street

Mildmay Park

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

Northampton Park

Terraces as part of the Marquess Estate scheme. Street-names in the vicinity of Canonbury House recall the former manor20 and its owners the Spencer Compton family. Marquesses of Northampton

5 L-shaped, S-facing, walled garden. Different areas are constantly evolving, divided by yew and lavender hedging and black bamboo. Planting leans toward foliage and leaf shade with Mediterranean influence.

Northampton Street

Street-names in the vicinity of Canonbury House recall the former manor20 and its owners the Spencer Compton family. Marquesses of Northampton

Horsfield House

Newbery House

2 Danneman, piano manufacturers

Was Little Sutton Street

Little Sutton St, 2 Richard & Miss Jane Hart, manufacturing chemist 1853

Northchurch

Perkins Market see Englefield Road

Ockendon Road

Perkins Market see Englefield Road

Red House Square

Remodelled 1995

Rotherfield Street

61-83 giant pilasters

11-28 Grander 1826 – ammonite capitals, an order used by George Dance

Scott Estate

South Canonbury Place.

12a Home of George & Weedon Grossmith, also Evelyn Waugh.

Southgate Road

Some earlier c19 terraces. This is essentially the southernmost renamed section of Green Lanes.

St.Paul’s Place

Terraces 1837

St.Paul’s Road

Pathway opposite Wallace Road. Old course of New River still with water in it. Continues on to Northampton land

102 Priory Cottage on corner of Newington Green Road dates from 1842. 

4 Tudor villa 1833

St.Paul’s church and St.Paul’s District schools. 280 children in 1833, a model establishment.  Cost £700. Home for the Head Teacher.  The children elected their own officers in the Branch Mission Society. The site was given by the Marquis of Northampton.

62-82 terrace replicating early 19^th neighbours – but as part of the Marquess Estate 1969.

Tibberton Square

Tibberton Square is doubly an oddity: architecturally, having never had a fourth side,and historically, as the creation of one man for philanthropic reasons.  The originator was Thomas Wontner (1747-1831), who in 1771 moved from hisnative Herefordshire with his young wife and brother John to become an apprenticehatter in London, while John entered the watch and clock trade.  In the year beforetheir move, Thomas had married Margaret Lowe, a girl whom he first met at churchin the village of Tibberton, in Worcestershire.  Both brothers later set up independently in the Minories, prospered, and were eventually joined in business by their sons.  Thomas became a Freeman of the City, a Liveryman, and in 1793 Master of the Worshipful Company of Feltmakers, an office he was to fill again the year before his death.  Of strong religious persuasion, he was for over 40 years (1782-1823) Manager and Controller of the Countess of  Huntingdon's City chapel, in association with the reformer William Wilberforce, and was a founder of both the London Missionary Society and the British and ForeignBible Society.  Wontner extended his hat-making works by opening a large fur manufactory in rural Islington, where he employed nearly 60 men and women for "separating and sorting the hair of beaver, seal and other skins", ready for making into hats and other goods.  The factory was near the foot of  Greenman's Lane.  Next, Wontner built himself a family house with a large front garden near his new factory, and after living in the City for 37 years, moved there in 1808.  In 1812 the New North Road, connecting Canonbury and the City, cut south across the Lower Road very near his factory and house, close to the eastern tip of St Mary's parish.  Towards Ball's Pond, a little beyond the Lower Road intersection, in 1819 a few streets were built including Annett's Crescent.  The rest was open country, and south, f the fur factory stretched a space named Islington Common.  Wontner's wife died in 1823.  Not long afterwards he decided to build houses onthe garden in front of his villa.  The area was irregular, rhomboid, rather than rectangular, with the villa on the western edge near its top corner.  The result was Tibberton Square, as Wontner nostalgically named it in memory of his first meeting with his beloved wife.  It consisted of two east-west terraces of unequal length with a garden, strip between, a couple of larger houses at the north-west corner because of the extra length on that side, and (apparently) four others linking with the villa to form the' short west side  The fourth side was never   built on, but was closed by ornamental railings and wrought-iron gates like theexclusive Highbury Place, leaving a vista to the south-east.  The family villa was attractively fanciful, its central front door flanked by Venetianwindows with large shutters, another pair of Venetian windows on the first floor, andtwo 'thermal' windows or lunettes on the top floor above a broad string-course..  By the 1870s the area was under pressure for building, with Peabody Squarebuilt in four blocks in 1866 and Greenman Street from 1873. Then pulled down for the baths.  Perhapsfor this reason, in 1896 the rest of the square was sold as nos. 1-12 and 18-29, for£8,645.  Later members of the Wontner family tried, unsuccessfully, to re-acquire anyof the property.  The houses now went down in the world.  Like much other local property theycame into multiple occupation, and during the Second World War the enclosinggates and screen were pointlessly removed, as were most railings at the time, forillusory scrap metal collection.  Although the square's worth was recognised by its inclusion in 1968 in the  St Peter's Ward conservation area, by 1970 only three of its houses were in single-family occupation, 46 households had no baths, and 28 no water supply.  In January1970 the square was acquired by the Council as one of 19 streets designatedfor face-lift, and restoration was carried out by the architects Andrews Sherlock &Partners, and the building group D. J. Higgins & Sons Ltd, and completed in June1979.  The size of the houses made them inconvenient for single families, yet toosmall for conversion into individual flats.  The 24 houses were therefore converted ,laterally, leaving the elevations unaltered, to make 36 two-bedroom flats and 12one-bedroom, accommodating 132 persons.  The central sloping garden was newlylandscaped, and levelled by several feet at the western end to admit light to the dark basements.  The railings were renewed.  Parking was banned, and access to thetwo terraces limited to pedestrians.  By the conversion, which cost £850,000, alternate front doors gave access to the ground floor and to the stair.  The completedconversion was one of nine in the London area highly commended in a DOIT;competition (1980).  Merlyn Rees, one-time Home Secretary, opened it in July 1979.  Among those present was Thomas Wontner's great-great-great-grandson Sir Hugh Wontner, former Lord Mayor, chairman of Claridge's and theBerkeley Hotels and a past Master of both the Worshipful Company of Feltmakersand the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.  Sir Hugh's son Giles Wontner is senior partner of the City firm of solicitorsWontner & Sons, of Broad Court, Bow Street, founded by another Thomas Wontnerwho was grandson to the Tibberton Square Thomas's brother John.  Thus the twobranches of the family unite in the head of that firm.  Architecture is Starkish: 3 storeys and basements, in brick, no stucco, and no window-guards.  Fronts areplain except the broad course above the basement.  Ground-floor windows areround-headed, fanlights are the wreath-like double circle studded with florets,framed by teardrop segments.  Those on the south side are renewals, but withoutflorets.  The blind east fronts are finished with blank window recesses and entrances to the end houses are placed on these fronts.  he terraces are raised on steps due to the fall in ground level from west to east.  Thebacks, with only tiny gardens or yards, are rather more barrack-like than the averageIslington terrace.

11 In 1851/2 at II lived Richard Braine,great-grandfather to Sir Bernard Braine, MP b. 1914 he died there aged 55 in 1852,and his wife and daughter continued to live there for a time.

13 front entrance different to the others

13-17 linking villas , not quite at right angles.

13-24 north terrace was re-numbered to run consecutively, 13-24.

28 From the square's first occupation, in 1827, Wontner's sons and daughters lived atno until long after their father's death.  The last daughter, Rebecca, died there,unmarried, in 1859.  Thomas junior, who succeeded his father in the business and diedwithout issue in 1851, was followed by his brother Joseph, whose son Algernon, astockbroker, inherited in 1867.

Terraces converted to flats.  Built 1823 for hat manufacturer, Thomas Wontner, in the grounds of his house. Isolated survival: converted by Andrews, Sherlock & Partners, 1979 faceeach other across a garden.  Villa, demolished for the Greenman Street Public Baths in 1894, replaced byhousing in the 1970s.

Wontner CloseBaths In 1894 ground wasrequired for building public swimming-baths under the Baths and Wash-Houses Act(1846-7), and unfortunately the whole west side of Tibberton Square, including theWontner villa, was razed.  The new baths on the site were opened in 1895.  Later the Greenman Street Baths themselves were closed anddemolished, and in 1987 Wontner Close, a group of flats designed by the Council'sArchitects' Department, was built on part of the site, merging agreeably with the endof the square.  The heights are pleasantly varied, and an interesting central staircasecleaves through a rift in the main building.  West of the flats, the iron trusses from oneof the swimming baths have been left in situ, and, painted a bright blue, greatlyenhance the small recreation ground created on the rest of the space.

Wallace Road

In the 1870s the railway was widened and the New River was put into pipes and covered over.  A pipeline was put down into the railway bridges.

The pre-1870 alignment of the New River can be seen in the line of narrow gardens behind Wallace Walk.  Hope villas house used to be Frankfurt villa, 1881.

The New River rises again towards the end of the road

1 Hope Villa,formerly FrankfortVilla, the New River's pre-1870 alignment is seen in thelong narrow garden behind this house built 1881.

Willow Bridge Road

Part of Frog Lane – the old road from London to Highbury. Laid out in the 19^th. Crosses over an old line of the New River;

New River basin.  New River Parkasimulated stretch has been created here as a miniature linear park opened in 1954.  Circular Watchhouse and railings of the 1820s, whenthe New River was realigned

St.Mary’s church.