Archive for Local history

New Holloway

29 March, 2008 at 8:05 pm · Filed under Campaigns, Family & friends, Going green, Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , ,

Richard & I had a normal Saturday morning today (shock, horror) including food shopping, laundry, picking up Percy’s Frontline prescription and unblocking the vaccuum cleaner. We know how to have fun... Then with Rich heading off to catch the old firm game, I caught up with the campaign team for lunch.

We had teams out in Holloway and St George’s, and ended up lunching just over the border in Camden at Rustique Cafe on Fortess Road. It’s a lovely bohemian cafe with sofas, wooden chairs, warm walls and a great good value menu. I can heartily recommend the pancakes with apples and cream cheese. There are similar cafes I love at Newington Green and Hazelville Road but nothing quite like it nearer home, certainly not on Upper Street.

After lunch, James Kempton & I went off to deliver letters to the new flats on Eden Grove and Hornsey Street. These are a mix of private and affordable homes, plus a gym, studios and the inevitable Tesco metro, as well as an attractive new open space between the D-shaped blocks (designed by Piers Gough). For as long as I can remember - certainly since I was a student at North London Poly in the late 80s - the site was a largely-derelict and inaccessible industrial estate. Now it’s completely transformed.

While most of the buildings are completely new, there are some older ones, all vaguely ecclesiastical. The development has preserved the old Mount Carmel school on Eden Grove, a victorian building with gothic windows that’s now converted to flats. Tucked away at the west end of Eden Grove is Sacred Heart church which dates from 1870. Next to it is a fascinating facade: “Vestry of St Mary, Islington” above, “Electricity Generating Station” below. This dates back to 1894 when the Vestry, the predecessor of the borough council, ran its own utilities. Over a century on, James is enthusing about the Council developing new green projects for local electricity generation; this is an idea I floated when I was a councillor so I’m delighted it’s still on the agenda.

Meanwhile we had a great opportunity to see the buildings in action as lived-in homes rather than the building sites or half-empty developments we’d visited before. I wondered if the private flats would be one of those gated communities that are cut off from their neighbourhood by choice or design. We were pleasantly surprised. The concierge was welcoming once he’d established we were legitimate callers. Wherever you go delivering, you find the pizza leaflets have got there before you. In this case I actually met the pizza man, complete with pizza, wandering around the central courtyard looking for a particular flat... There is an active residents’ association, with a sociable outlook (a pub crawl features among recent events). I also had the chance to chat to some of the residents who were genuinely pleased to have us seeking their views. New Holloway is not New Labour! I’ve already picked up one issue where we can get some results for them. So we’ll definitely be back for more.

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Hail and history on Good Friday

21 March, 2008 at 9:53 pm · Filed under Church & faith, Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , ,

This morning my delivery round took me to the network of streets between City Road and the canal. These are some of the oldest streets in the area, and there are little bits of history at every turn.

On 32 Haverstock Street, now a private house being refurbished, there is a plaque saying ‘Seminary for Young Ladies’. On the corner of Coombs Street and City Garden Row is a plaque marking the boundary of St Luke’s parish.

Another church, St Matthew’s, used to be nearby on City Road. It was destroyed in bombing in 1940, and Langdon Court now stands on the site. Behind it in Oakley Crescent, the former vicarage survives. It’s now called St Peter’s House; when I first came to Islington in 1992, the then curate of St Mary’s church, Pete Ellem, was living there; we enjoyed many evenings of coffee, philosophy and gossip in his attic flat. What I didn’t know then was that another former tenant was the French poet, Guillaume Apollinaire. Perhaps Islington should put up a plaque?

Even the street names are full of history. Nelson Street and Nelson Terrace were built in1802; Nelson was already a hero from the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, years before Trafalgar. Elia Street is named after the pen-name of the essayist Charles Lamb who had a cottage nearby on Colebrooke Row. City Garden Row evokes the time when this land was a recreation area just outside the city boundaries. Other streets like Graham Street, Noel Road and Vincent Terrace are probably named after the developers’ families (as are Matilda Street, Muriel Street and Rodney Street in Barnsbury). We like a bit of history. Today’s developers, who seem to go for empty names like ‘The Island’, ‘The Base’ and ‘NorthPoint’, should take note….

Despite being just off City Road, the streets were surprisingly quiet. In fact the only noise came from the refuse collection and recycling teams doing their rounds. On a Bank Holiday? Yes, thanks to the Lib Dem Council and the hard-working binmen. We also have a Friday collection in Morton Road and I’m glad to say both our bins and our recycling were collected as normal today.

The weather this morning was much better than forecast, and perfect for delivery. That changed this afternoon. About 5pm I was picking my way around the steps and basements of Packington Street, when the sky suddenly went dark, and then hail struck. I lurked in a porch while the ice bounced off the pavement and thunder rumbled.

Today is of course Good Friday. As a Christian, I should have gone to church, indeed would have done if I’d not had my deliveries to get out. My church organises a procession on Good Friday; carrying the cross along Upper Street to St Mary’s, starting at noon. They’d have had good weather today. On the first Good Friday, the Gospels record that the sky went dark and the earth shook. So the hailstorm gave me pause for thought as well as a pause in my delivery.

The storm passed and I carried on delivering, albeit with bits of ice inside my collar and making their way down my back…. Still it did make our post-delivery meet-up for a drink all the more welcome. To quote Apollinaire, “La joie venait toujours après la peine”; pain is always followed by joy. Not a bad thought for Good Friday.

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Springtime for Packington

19 March, 2008 at 9:01 am · Filed under Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , , ,

The spring air is chilly and May day may seem an age away, but it’s just six weeks to the London elections. Thanks to the efforts of my Liberal Democrat council colleagues, virtually every estate now has entrance security, meaning deliveries have to be done in the early morning “tradesman’s” slot. Even though the post now often arrives mid-afternoon ... So my morning routine now includes an hour or so of trotting round with leaflets before work. Who needs the gym?
Yesterday I went along the canal, sharing the towpath with cyclists and joggers on their way to work, passing sleepy ducks who seemed untroubled by this very civilised rush hour.It’s fascinating to see familiar buildings from the other side; like the NarrowBoat pub, small and quaint at street level, which shows its elegant glass walls over the canal.
Alongside the towpath are the hoardings surrounding the Packington Square estate. Packington used the same panel-built design as used for Ronan Point. Ronan Point famously collapsed after a gas explosion. Under Labour, Islington Council failed to make the necessary checks that the buildings met modern standards: they don’t. The Liberal Democrat council made the estate safe by taking out all the gas appliancies. And now the estate is finally being pulled down and rebuilt. The residents have chosen a traditional street pattern; ironic, as that’s what the planners swept away when the estate was first built. It marks the high tide of post-war estates in Islington; after Packington, residents and councillors revolted and refused to demolish any more streets.
Beyond the hoarding, the first blocks have already come down, with one lone lift tower opposite Cluse Court still standing. Packington has been crying out for action for years. Neighbours on my estate were rehoused from Packington twenty years ago when their homes became uninhabitable. The original estate layout with quarter mile corridors in the sky was a hotspot for crime; so the estate security here was particularly welcome, but it cuts the estate up into fortresses where each staircase and landing is bisected by fences; one former resident calls it Colditz.
The optimistic illustrations of the new housing association estate are a total contrast: they show sunlit streets, with happy residents and even Eames-style chairs on the balconies. But it’s not too sanitised; on one of the drawings, an enterprising campaigner has stuck a Stop the War sticker so it appears like a banner over the balcony. Radical Islington lives!

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St George’s in the sun

8 February, 2008 at 10:10 pm · Filed under Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , ,

A beautiful day today so it was a pleasure to be out campaigning in the sun. Today I was up in St George’s ward, in Islington North. The team there have given me so much support that it’s good to be able to help them for a change. Walking up Tufnell Park Road I was amazed how good the old St George’s church was looking.

This Victorian church building was opened by a breakaway congregation in 1863 and closed a century later when it needed repairs. It was sold off by the Anglican church in the 1970s, and the parish is now served from a modern building nearby in Crayford Road.

The old church building was used for years as a theatre but that too closed, and the building was squatted. It was recently purchased by, appropriately enough, another church, ‘the House on the Rock’. They have got heritage funding to restore the building, which is an unusual round shape, based on the medieval church of St George in Salonica. All the time I’ve known it, the stone was dirty and the building seemed squat as well as squatted. Now it’s been scrubbed clean, showing off the lovely honey-coloured stone. And you can see the separate campanile, which was partly hidden before by various temporary buildings. I don’t know what the inside is like, but judging from the outside, the restorers have done a fantastic job.

We ran into the Council’s graffiti clean-up team, busy cleaning tags from the walls in Carleton Road. This is one of the schemes started when I had the environment brief on Islington Council, so it’s a real joy to see them now. I also asked them about the work they do along with the Greenspace team, putting young offenders to work. Their view is that it’s hard work, because most of the youths don’t want to be there and just go through the motions; but for one or two in each group it really makes a difference, so it’s worth the effort.

As ever, we met some fascinating people, including a retired nurse who had come to Britain from Antigua in the late 1950s. She told me about her children - teachers and doctors - and how angry she is when people talk about the importance of being born here, when she and her family have contributed so much to this country.

Finally we took a look at some of the new school buildings, the nursery at Tufnell Park School, the Bridge school and the new hall at Holloway school. Outside the Bridge was a minibus sponsored by the Lords Taveners and presented by Ashley Cole. Maybe not the best role model at the moment.

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QT and candi

15 January, 2008 at 11:20 pm · Filed under Going green, Local history ·Tagged , , , , , ,

I finished work at lunchtime today to go and take part in a Question Time panel at City & Islington College’s Centre for Lifelong Learning at Finsbury Park. Part of the College’s sustainability week, the Question Time was on the theme of sustainability, with speakers from all the main parties plus Stephen Taylor from Islington Friends of the Earth. It was an extremely enjoyable event. Like the BBC version, it was filmed, which was fun. Unlike the TV version, the questioners were not political plants, but asked open-ended questions; as as one questioner said “I don’t already know the answer to this”. As panellists we explored the answers rather than made digs at each other. And because all the questions were on an environmental theme, we could develop lines of thought as we went. The students were from at least 4 continents, adding a suitably international feel to a global topic. No apathy here.

Questions ranged from should the UN limit family size (no) to can we sell the need for action on climate change to people with more pressing problems (yes). I think the answer has to be to make the connection between changes that help us and that also help fight climate change. Energy efficiency saves you money; leaving the car at home makes you fitter; shopping locally boosts your community. The UK is blessed with huge opportunities to harness renewable energy. And our current building boom is a fantastic chance to lead by example on sustainable development.

The Centre for Lifelong Learning is itself a good example of this. The original building was Finsbury Park School, one of those familar redbrick London schools. Similar ones, Ambler School and Gillespie School, still flourish nearby. Finsbury Park merged with Ambler and the site closed as a school in 1964. It later became part of Islington sixth form college. In 1993 it merged into City and Islington College (candi). Then around 2001, the college chose the site for the lifelong learning centre. They could have demolished the old building and started again. Instead they took the front off, extended it with a very good modern frontage - which makes it part of Blackstock Road rather than set back - and retained the brick arches and high ceilings of the old school as the framework of the building. It looks spectacular inside and works really well.

It’s a sustainable building too in that it includes shared use. As well as the college, the site includes Islington’s new N4 public library. Roll back to 1988, I was at library school further along Blackstock Road at Highbury Grove, in what was then North London Poly. Nearby was Islington Central Library on Holloway Road, well placed to serve the residents of Highbury. But no library at all for people down the hill in Finsbury Park - and this in a small borough which has ten libraries compared to just six in the whole of Kensington & Chelsea. It’s wonderful to see this bright and well-used library in what was a really neglected area. Fantastic though it is, the library had a controversial start; it replaced the small but well-loved Arthur Simpson library on Hanley Road, further along Stroud Green Road, much to the anger of its loyal users. The fact that the old library did not comply with disability access, and that its relocation enabled the fantastic new facility in one of Islington’s most neglected centres, was no comfort. Going for the N4 library was the right decision; but I do understand those who would have liked both.

The extent to which we can ‘have it all’ was a recurring theme in the QT debate. Jeanette Arnold (Labour) said we shouldn’t make people feel guilty about their gadgets; James Humphreys (Green) said we are consuming far too much stuff that we don’t really need, and it’s got to change. Yes things do have to change, but we should do so in a way that excites people about the fantastic opportunities we have; for renewable energy, for micro-generation, for tackling fuel poverty, getting fitter, supporting local shops, encouraging stronger communities - all the things people that matter to people who may not have the environment top of their agenda. Climate change is real; it’s happening now; and it’s man-made. We have not yet missed our chance to tackle it; and the solutions are man-made too.

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Work and Pleydell

12 January, 2008 at 6:21 pm · Filed under Campaigns, Local history, Neighbourhood

I was at the sweaty end of the perspiration/inspiration split today. While many of the party were debating at the Manifesto conference, we had an action day in Bunhill ward, delivering leaflets across local estates.

We had a mini-pub crawl at lunchtime after slight confusion saw one lot in the Wetherspoons on Old Street and the rest in the Litten Tree a couple of doors along, but we were soon reunited. Where would we be without mobile phones?

The names of estates and the individual houses give clues to the history of the area. The Pleydell estate has its main blocks all beginning with G: Gambier, Gastigny, Grayson, and Galway. Add in the Guinness Trust estate next door and it becomes quite a theme.

I’ve been trying to find out the origin of the names and their connection with the local area.

The excellent British History online site led me to: ‘Bethnal Green’, Old and New London: Volume 2 (187 8) and the history of the old French Hospital in Bethnal Green.

“This establishment owes its origin to a M. de Gastigny, a French gentleman, who had been Master of the Buckhounds to William III., in Holland, while Prince of Orange. At his death, in 1708, he bequeathed a sum of £1,000 towards founding an hospital, in London, for the relief of distressed French Protestants. The money was placed at interest for eight years, during which successive benefactions were added to the fund. In 1716, a piece of ground in Old Street, St. Luke’s, was purchased of the Ironmongers’ Company, and a lease was taken from the City of London of some adjoining land, forming altogether an area of about four acres, on which a building was erected, and fitted up for the reception of eighty poor Protestants of the French nation. In 1718, George I. granted a charter of incorporation to the governor and directors of the hospital, under which the Earl of Galway was appointed the first governor.”

So that explains Gastigny and Galway. Any clues for Grayson and Gambier?

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Duncan Terrace and the New River walk

5 December, 2007 at 1:10 pm · Filed under Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , ,

Quite a nice piece in last week’s Islington Tribune about plans to improve Duncan Terrace Gardens. Jill Nicholls, the chair of Duncan Terrace residents’ association is a charming and forceful woman, who, as she says herself, ‘takes no prisoners’. So her praise for the Council’s efforts to improve this popular small park is worth having.

Duncan Terrace Gardens is one of a series of linear parks marking the route of the New River which brought drinking water from Hertfordshire into the heart of London. The New River, masterminded by Sir Hugh Myddelton, transformed life in Islington. Myddelton Square, Hugh Myddelton school and statues of Sir Hugh at Islington Green and in the Town Hall commemorate the man, while the source at Chadwell near Great Amwell gives its name to Chadwell Street and Amwell Street.

Originally the New River flowed as an open canal down what is now Petherton Road, through Canonbury, then Colebrooke Row. Now it is covered over, and forms a series of linear parks through Islington, including the pretty New River Walk in Canonbury (which has an ornamental waterway) and the fernery along Asteys Row. In fact you can walk the route of the New River all the way from Hertfordshire.

Later the New River was extended to Mr Sadler’s wells at Clerkenwell and the reservoir in Claremont Square. The New River Company was formed and built homes for its workers nearby. Charles Allen House on Amwell Street and Mylne Street off Myddelton Square are named after company executives.

Now the grand offices and laboratory buildings have been converted to housing (a much more green solution than new tower blocks, Ken Livingstone please note). You can see the New River Head gardens, and information about the history of the site, from a viewpoint off Myddelton Passage.

Over recent years, Islington Council and Thames Water have been improving the spaces along the route, so it’s good that Duncan Terrace Gardens are getting their turn now.

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Arsenal Ladies’ FC Freedom Celebrations

27 November, 2007 at 12:16 am · Filed under Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , , ,

A fantastic evening tonight at Islington Town Hall, as Arsenal Ladies FC received the Freedom of the Borough. This is a rare honour but could not be better-deserved. Arsenal Ladies have won a quadruple in the last season - the Premier League, the FA Cup, the Women’s League and the UEFA Women’s Cup - adding to scores of trophies since they were founded twenty years ago. They are quite simply the best women’s football team in the country; and the only one to have received such an honour from any city or borough.

Politicians from all sides made graceful speeches but the highlight was a barnstorming speech from Lib Dem Cllr Laura Willoughby, who not only paid tribute to Arsenal Ladies, but laid down a challenge to sports bosses and the media to give women’s sport fair coverage. From my years working for the Sports Council, I’m used to women’s sport being marginalised. But I didn’t know that only 5% of sports press coverage goes to women’s sports. Or that the only reason the local papers printed match reports of Arsenal Ladies’ FA final was because Laura herself sent them in.

It was a very happy evening, with the gallery packed with teenage girls for whom Arsenal Ladies are fantastic role models. Normally at council meetings the gallery is empty; or if there are protestors, the Mayor has to shut them up. Tonight, the Mayor was encouraging the gallery to cheer along.

Afterward we had drinks and nibbles and mingled with friends old and new (I recruited a new deliverer for Canonbury!). The Sports Development officers were looking back on highs and lows of sports policy in Islington. In 1999, the dying Labour administration cut sports development all together. Under the Lib Dems it’s flourishing again. But tonight was not a partisan event. Councillors of all parties (in Islington that’s Lib Dem, Labour and Green), plus Jeremy Corbyn MP, chatted happily. Emily Thornberry MP did not bother to show up - her loss.

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Remembrance

13 November, 2007 at 8:23 am · Filed under Campaigns, Church & faith, Family & friends, Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , ,

Islington’s Remembrance service is always special but this year’s was particularly well done. We were blessed with fine weather - after an alarmingly rainy start to the day - and the new war memorial on Islington Green was a perfect setting for around 1,000 people to join in the service.

The Green was redesigned last year. It had been a messy layout of different levels of muddy grass, badly-maintained paths and entrances in awkward places. Now it has been redone and miraculously seems bigger, with a wider central path, larger, smoother lawns, new benches and the old heavy shrubbery and odd walls removed.

The centrepiece is the war memorial. For years it was a small obelisk put up as a ‘temporary’ memorial in the years after World War 1. It was well-loved but shabby - at bit like Islington Green itself. Now we have a new memorial designed by John Maine RA; it is a spectacular giant wreath, with the plaques from the previous memorial set into its base. I love it. It is a fine piece of public art for all of Islington, all year round; and at Remembrance it is a dignified centrepiece for a ceremony which is not just about the victims of wars past, but also of the wars being fought today.

Last year the bands and parade, the councillors and public, were getting used to the new layout and it was a bit awkward. But this year it worked perfectly. Richard & I stood with former Mayor Mary Powell and her son John. Mary was Islington’s first Liberal Democrat Mayor and never misses Remembrance. Mary now uses a mobility scooter; before the redesign of the Green she would have risked getting stuck in the mud or been banished to the edge of the service. With the new memorial, we were able to get close behind the flags and really be part of it.
My only doubt is about the planting behind the memorial. The planting needs to be light but dignified - and to look good in November. At the moment it is some rather reedy grasses that look a bit thin. But talking to others at the service, there was general enthusiasm for the new memorial - including from some who were sceptical before.

The new memorial isn’t the first change to Remembrance in recent years. Margot Dunn, when Liberal Democrat Mayor, negotiated Islington’s first multi-faith Remembrance. Now the range of prayers offered, as my colleague Meral Ece notes, more truly reflects our community. Like the new memorial, what was once controversial is now part of our tradition.

Mary told us how during WWII she was living in a flat (since demolished) next to what is now the Slug & Lettuce, overlooking the Green - and spending time in an air raid shelter underneath it. Islington and Finsbury were literally shaped by the war - Highbury Corner, the layout of the Angel, half our parks, were the result of bombing. All Londoners have their own stories to tell. Both my grandfathers survived the trenches of WWI only to live through the blitz in WWII. Mum’s home suffered bomb damage; luckily she was also in the shelter at the time. Dad’s dad turned up to work in City Road as usual to find that the shop had been destroyed overnight (Wesley’s Chapel next door survived). My grandmothers lost a generation of friends in WWI, and went on to raise their families in a world of rationing and evacuation, gas masks and air raids. War was a universal experience, and coming together to remember was a shared experience too.

For a few years, it seemed as if Remembrance was dying out with the generations who had lived through WWI. I used to be a Remembrance sceptic. I thought it was all about glorifying war instead of condemning it, but I was wrong. We are right to condemn the evil of war - particularly unnecessary wars like Iraq; but also right to remember the victims and casualties of war.

Another friend at the service was David Tibbs and we went for tea together afterwards. David’s a lovely man, two thirds zany, one third immense common sense, no pomposity or spin. He was telling us about the Mundane Appreciation Society whose mission apparently is to promote the awareness of everyday life. Which is appropriate; appreciating our everyday life, and not taking it for granted, is also part of our thanks to those who defend our freedoms in war and in peace.

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Biography of an historic house

8 November, 2007 at 7:46 pm · Filed under Local history, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , ,

Local historian Mary Cosh’s latest book was launched in some style at the Museum of St John in Clerkenwell last night.

Instead of being a narrative about a town, a community or a family, it’s the story of a house, 53 Cross Street.

Like many of Islington’s Georgian houses, 53 Cross Street fell into neglect. Hard to imagine now, but there was a time when you could not give away housing in Islington; houses that estate agents would now praise as elegant and desirable – and price at £1M - were squatted and semi-derelict. The wonderful Victoria County History describes Islington’s growth and change over these years.

53 Cross Street is one of a terrace of once-grand houses that had been bought by Islington Council. But unable to afford to refurbish them or to let them as permanent housing in such a poor state, the Council let them to a housing co-op instead. The idea was that the tenants could stay for a short time on cheap rent, until the Council came up with a plan. The groups were called Short Life User Groups, or SLUGs. A week may be a long time in politics, but a year is a short time in local government. Many years went by and the houses remained in limbo.

What sets no 53 apart is that one of its residents was an artist and student, Martin King. Martin engaged with the house and instead of doing it up, stripped it back; he revealed the original decorations, finding out about previous generations of occupants as he went.

The Council eventually decided to sell the ‘short-life’ houses. The book describes how initially the Council thought they could get £11k for 53 Cross Street – it turned out to be rather more in the end… Some of the houses were sold to housing associations, others to private owners; the income has been invested in services, the buildings have been restored and are now back in use as permanent homes.

Number 53 may be on to the next stage of its long life, but thanks to Martin’s unique project, we can all see how it was in the past. The book is beautifully illustrated with photographs by Pauline Lord – highly recommended. In fact my signed copy has already been borrowed by a friend who couldn’t be there last night.

“53 Cross Street; the biography of an historic house”, by Mary Cosh and Martin King, is available from Islington Archaeological & History Society, 8 Wynyatt Street, London EC1V 7HU, cost £20.

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