Places

On the west side of Cloudesley Street, just south of Cloudesley Square, lies an attractive and highly distinctive building which has played an important role in the educational and wider community history of the Cloudesley Estate since it was first opened as an infant school for Holy Trinity Church in 1830.  We already have a website article on Trinity School, here, but Jenny has now completed some forensic research into the subject and has published this fascinating account:  "Cloudesley Street and 130 Years and Educational Excellence".

The story is in two parts.  Up to his death in 1902, the remarkable Lawrence Major presided over the school as Headmaster and later as President of the "Cloudesley" Old Boys Club.  Mr Major was clearly a much loved character at the heart of the Cloudesley community and he is commemorated by not one but two stained glass windows in the church.

After a period of decline under LCC ownership, the building was reopened as the "Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid Club" and thereafter was central to the lives of many boys and girls on the Cloudesley Estate and beyond, right up to the 1960s.  Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid, the wife of the American ambassador, was another remarkable character and under her auspices and subsequently those of her daughter, the glamorous Lady Jean Templeton Reid Ward, the club thrived and supported an extraordinary range of activities, including, according to Jenny's press cuttings, scouting, girl-guiding, a "cubbiest cub competition", amateur dramatics, art, discussion groups, football, boxing, gymnastics, ping pong, needlework and ballet and all types of dancing.  Latterly, the building also hosted a "Darby and Joan" club for senior citizens.  Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid and her daughter Jean, together with several other ladies who ran the club are also commemorated in the church in a series of plaques, and in the case of Maria Gates, Superintendent of the Girls' Sunday School for 60 years, another magnificent stained glass window (see below).

There must still be neighbours in the area who can still remember the youth club at 16A Cloudesley Street.  We urge you to read Jenny's "Cloudesley Street and 130 Years and Educational Excellence" and if it jogs any memories, or reminds you of any old photos, please let us know.

If you've ever wondered about the history of the rather attractive building on the South side of Richmond Avenue, just next to Dowrey Street, read on!  After years of painstaking research, Jenny has finally unravelled its story, which is tortuous, with ups and downs and interesting lessons about the social history of the area.  You can download Jenny's detailed account here:

Download "The Two Mission/Parish Halls of Holy Trinity Church"

It turns out that the present building, Beckett House at 98 Richmond Ave, was originally the Mission Hall (basically a church hall) for Holy Trinity Church, but that it was preceded by an earlier church hall, St George's Hall, at 89 Richmond Avenue, on the North side of the road, opposite - see OS map c1909 below (St George's marked by red dot).

St George's Hall was built in 1853 and served as the venue for a wide range of church hall activities for 56 years, principally as a well known Youth Institute, until 1909 when it was replaced by the new Mission Hall.  Thereafter, St George's suffered a slow but inexorable decline serving inter alia as a store for the Church Missionary Society, a timber yard and some sort of factory.  It was demolished in the 1980s and replaced with the flats at 89 A-D of today. We do not have a proper photo of the original building, just a rather dismal image from 1965 when a brick curtain wall appears to have been erected in front of the original facade.

The present day Mission Hall was a larger building built in 1909 by Dove Brothers using the architect JS Alder, who appears to have had some reputation for late gothic churches and church halls.  Like St George's Hall, it was used for a variety of activities and was for many years evidently an important part of the social fabric of the Cloudesley Estate.  But like Holy Trinity itself (made "redundant" in 1978) it appears to have slowly declined, physically and functionally, reflecting the declining role of the church in the education and entertainment of the local community, until in 1969 it was redeveloped as a Montessori School with residential flats above (one of which was occupied by the Association's own Florence Salberter, now moved to the Lake District!).  It's still a fine building, though, as the following photos show.

The Crown Pub, much loved by the Cloudesley Association, stands on the corner of Cloudesley Road and Cloudesley Square.  It is a Fullers pub and serves a mean pint of London Pride!  Following the closure of the Cloudesley Arms, previously on the corner of Cloudesley Street and Cloudesley Place, the Crown is the only remaining pub on the Cloudesley Estate.

The Crown was probably built by David Sage and building probably started in 1821.  We know this from the excellent "Cloudesley: 500 Years in Islington", by Cathy Ross, where Sage, himself a publican, is identified as the original leaseholder of nos. 40-116 Cloudesley Road.  The address was originally 39 Lower Islington Terrace and was later changed in the 1860s to 116 Cloudesley Road.  The freehold has been owned by the Cloudesley Trust throughout, right up to the present day.  There is evidence (see below) that the building was twice as large as the rest of the houses on Cloudesley Road and that it was used as a "pub" or "beer house" from very early on, certainly from as early as 1841.  This raises the possibility that it might have been designed as a purpose-built drinking establishment.  Sadly, Cathy Ross thinks this is unlikely, not least because, as she points out, the Cloudesley Trust, as freeholder, had a strongly Christian ethos and would not have wanted to be seen to be encouraging the consumption of alcohol.  Cathy thinks it more likely that it was originally a terraced house which was adapted by a leaseholder (possibly the licensed victualler John Manning in 1841 - see below).

Following extensive research, we have established a complete list of the residents at the premises up to the mid 20th century, drawing on three main sources:  the PubWiki site; Jenny's Hunting Ghosts article on Cloudesley Road; and most recently, Cloudesley resident Mick Bucknell who, using the Kelly's and Robson's trade directories in the British Library, has compiled an extraordinary set of records giving the names of all residents of all buildings in Cloudesley Road, with dates and, often, occupations!  (This will surely be the subject of a future website article!).

The table below illustrates the changing management of the pub over the years, according to these three sources:

Clearly there is a substantial degree of agreement across the three sources, but Mick's list is the only one which shows residents during the first 40 years.  Although these residents have been strangely difficult to track down on Ancestry, we have been able to identify them fairly unambiguously every 10 years using online trade directory and census records and based on this we can be fairly certain that the property was used continuously for the retailing of alcoholic liquors from the outset. 

Although we can find no trace of the first resident, William Doncaster, apart from his listing in Robson's, we have John Manning clearly identified as a "Licensed Victualler" as early as 1841, aged 45. 

Next door, the present day 114 Cloudesley Road is also identified as a commercial premises, initially a grocers shop and later as a chandlers, and it remained as such up to the 1980s, when Jenny took the photo below - this may give some clue as to what the Crown originally looked like, although remember it was probably twice as wide as its neighbour. 

The 1951 census shows James Turner as a licensed victualler living at 39 Lower Islington Terrace, so in this case Mick's records may be incomplete.  Interestingly, there is a Mary Hill living at 4 Islington Terrace, but she is a dairyman's wife! 

Then in 1861 we can confirm that Thomas Burt was indeed the proprietor and the premises is identified for the first time as "The Crown".  Moreover, the household includes, in addition to wife Jane and various children, a Barmaid, Catherine Brazier, and a Potman, Alfred Evans.  In other words, by this time at least, we can assume that the building was a fully fledged public house.

In the 1870s all sources are agreed that Thomas Francis Smith (1828 -1869) took over at no. 116, identified as a "Victualler" or as "Publican, Wine Spirits + Bottled Beer Merchants".  In fact we were been contacted via this website by his great great grandson, Malcolm, and it was this that prompted our research!  Malcolm has established that Thomas Francis Smith had French Huguenot antecedants and had previously worked as a victualler at two other pubs or "beer houses" in the Spitalfields area.  In 1869 Thomas sadly died and the establishment was run by his second wife Hannah Smith until 1871.  Malcolm has kindly provided us with this rather splendid family photo taken in 1925.  The matriarchal figure on the right is Ann Brown (nee Smith), Thomas' daughter and Malcolm's great grandmother, who left The Crown when she was about 14.

As to the character of the establishment, we need to point out that by the 1870s the area had a distinctly seedy reputation.  For example in George Gissing's "The Nether World", set in the 1870s, (see here) the heroine Clara takes up somewhat dubious employment in a bar off Upper Street run by the scheming Mrs Tubbs:

"She passed on and entered the place of refreshment that was kept by Mrs. Tubbs. Till recently it had been an ordinary eating-house or coffee-shop; but having succeeded in obtaining a license to sell strong liquors, Mrs. Tubbs had converted the establishment into one of a more pretentious kind. She called it ‘Imperial Restaurant and Luncheon Bar.’ "

A similar impression is given by the Booth Poverty Maps published around the turn of the century.  The following are extracts from notes taken by a Booth Investigator during a walk around the Cloudesley area in the company of a police sergeant, where he would have passed by the Crown:

"... through Warren St to Barnsbury Rd [just South of the Crown].  Some brothels in the side streets off the main road. ...   Then North up Cloudesley Rd where there are some shops of a third rate kind.  Better houses on the East than on the West side".

Milton's Yard (later Dove's yard), the area behind the Crown occupied mainly by cabmen, was described in a report to Cloudesley Trust  as

"small tenements and some workshops and stables which were very old and quite worn out and in fact scarcely fit for human habitation" !

The Crown as we know it today was built or rebuilt around the end of the 19th century, with work probably starting in the 1890s.  At that time, the 80 year Cloudesley Trust leaseholds were coming up for renewal and that on no. 116 Cloudesley Road was granted to the brewer Taylor Walker and Co until 1979, on condition that £2,000 was spent on rebuilding the property, according to Cathy Ross (cited above).   Dove Bros owned the leaseholds on many neighbouring properties then, including no 114 next door, and its leases were renewed subject to similar improvement clauses.  This led to the construction of Stonefield Mansions next door to the Crown in Cloudesley Square, designed by Horace Porter, surveyor to the Cloudesley Trust.  

We can trace the development and rebuilding of the property on the following historical maps showing the corner of Cloudesley Square and Cloudesley Road:

116 Cloudesley Road (or Upper Islington Terrace as it was known then) was one of the first properties to be built on the Cloudesley Estate and was complete along with the rest of the Cloudesley Road terraced houses by 1830, as our first map shows.  Note that in this map, as well as in the 1853 map, no. 116 appears to be substantially wider than the next door no. 114 and to extend further at the rear.  By 1868 a separate square building appears at the rear, probably a workshop within Milton's/Dove's Yard, which is still there in the 1893-96 OS map.  Then by the 1940s-60s this has been incorporated into or replaced by the Stonefield Mansions development on Cloudesley Square.  More importantly the Crown has been rebuilt as a much bigger building, now extending back along Cloudesley Square right to the end of the gardens of the neighbouring houses on Cloudesley Road.  Between the last two maps the Crown is "filled in" until it becomes the building we know today, whilst Stonesfield Mansions is extended forward on to Cloudesley Square.

It is tempting to ascribe the rebuilding of the present day Crown to Dove Bros and Horace Porter but this is probably false.  Although Doves were the leaseholders for most of the Cloudesley Road properties to the South of 116, including the neighbouring 114, they do not appear to have had any rights over the Crown itself, which was probably leased by the publicans at the time, which, referring to the table earlier, may have been Henry and Mrs Price, Arthur Sykes or Julia King.  Cathy Ross notes that Taylor Walker rebuilt their Limehouse brewery in 1899 using specialist architects Inskipp and McKenzie, so perhaps they also designed the new Crown.

In any case, the architecture of the new Crown building is far more elaborate and arguably superior to either the other original terraced houses in Cloudesley Road or to Stonefield Mansions.  Indeed it is a Grade II listed building and the Historic England listing describes it in extravagant terms as:

"Public house. Late C19. Yellow brick set in Flemish bond with dressings of red brick, stone and terracotta; .... In the 'Queen Anne' style. Ground-floor pub frontage framed by Corinthian pilasters of grey and pink polished granite. .... chamfered corner entrance with scrolled pediment and double panelled doors .... frieze of gauged red brick with festoons in terracotta panels .... panels of red herringbone brick .... The interior has features which could be of late C19 or early C20 date, notably panelled dado, panels and frieze of moulded and glazed tile, relief-moulded ceiling, island bar front and glazed screens; but they may be replacement designs in whole or part." !

Here's a few photos to show what they mean - note the splendid Victorian interior with inticate wood carving and original etched glass panels:

And here's a really nice painting of the Crown by local artist Francisco Guiterrez (see also the Gallery, here).

We currently know very little about the development of the Crown throughout the 20th Century, except that it certainly had its ups and downs, including in living memory!  Perhaps someone can tell us more?  Please comment below or send us an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .  Meanwhile, we leave the last (edited) words to Jenny, who has been a regular since the early 1980s:

"I expect that Malcom may not know that there was a scene from the film “A Fish Called Wanda” filmed in The Crown, 1988 I think – blink and you miss it but it should show the red plush stall seating and the red plush curtains that I remember about 40 yrs. ago!

There was in the past a different pub sign – a simple Crown on a pale background, if I remember correctly hanging at the front of The Crown in Cloudesley Road. I never understood why it was taken down and the Fullers sign put up at the side. I think the sign hung behind the bar for a bit  – wonder if it is still in the basement?

The Crown went from being an old fashioned Victorian pub with small table lights with, I think, red shades with gold braid in a circle above the bar to having (in my mind) the heart taken out of it and stripped of the atmosphere. It became noisy due to the lack of curtaining and a bit “spit and sawdust”

It has improved since!

I remember being told that The Crown had magnificent engraved glass in the windows until someone threw some metal furniture through them – perhaps only a story! It had uneven York stone slabs in the area at the front.

As landlords came and went the outside furniture changed from metal to wood several times, sometimes dragged in each night and sometimes chained down (no throwing or nicking). The noise of the furniture being dragged in at night and the noise of “bottling out” as the empties crashed into bins each night brought complaints from neighbours.

In my early years The Crown customers used to take up the street outside, with drinkers sitting on front door steps in the summer, and the “party” continued outside after hours. There were more benches in the streets then, and more complaints from neighbours.

A group of us got together and chose our representatives who went to the Town Hall and had the licence changed and now on most days at 10.30pm customers move inside, and I think leave by the side door.

Years ago the Council parked a skip outside The Crown once a month at the weekend for residents to fill with unwanted furniture (free use). One had to get up early as it filled up very fast with people throwing stuff out – I indulged in the odd Skip Dive and retrieved some nice old pub chairs – they were patched up and are still in the family!

At one time an enterprising Landlord had a Spit Roast smoking away within the railings in the corner under the front window.

I suggest that that there are some “regulars” still around that know The Crown better than me."

Later Addition:  some more highly informative details from long-term regular Spug - we now know there were two bars, an off-licence, iron pillars, and the identity of the window-breaker (but redacted below)!

"I first visited the Crown in 1978. At that time it had a front bar and a back bar. One was the Saloon and one the Public Bar, though I don’t recall which was which.  On the “internal” side of the island was a screen with a door connecting the two bars. On the “external” side of the island there were two substantial screens with doors and this created a separate space devoted to off-sales. This space had its own door in the external wall, which is just about visible today. There was also a screen separating this space from the bar, with a small window for conducting transactions. I think this arrangement survived into the early Eighties (but not sure).

I see the details of the rebuilding in the late Nineteenth century are murky.  It must have been a substantial rebuild because the upper floors are supported by iron pillars, allowing big windows on the ground floor. These pillars would not have been present in a residential house and you couldn’t introduce them without dismantling the upper floors. So, a big rebuild. 

You might already know who broke the windows, but as it’s hearsay it can’t really be published. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. [Redacted, Ed!].  He was a bit of a wildcat." .....

.....  Malcolm  was “pot-man” at the Crown in the Eighties, meaning he collected glasses and in return got the occasional free beer.  ..... A few times he turned up at the pub to find it empty – everybody was downstairs drinking in the beer-cellar. There are enough gaps in the floorboards that the staff could look upwards and keep an eye out for any customers wandering in. If they knew the customer they’d get an invite down to the cellar.

Later Addition, April 2023:  Using FindMyPast, Jenny has compiled a collection of newspaper articles referring to the Crown over a 100 year period from 1857 to 1957.  You can view the full compilation here.  What emerges is that the Crown was very much a community hub, as, indeed, it remains to a large extent today.  

The pub was a venue for meetings of all sorts, including the local Ratepayers Association, the Cloudesley Harmonic Club, Professor Carcass's Punch and Judy Show, and the delightfully named Lucky Beans Society.  Interestingly, the pub was used for several inquests, especially by a coroner called Dr Lankester.  But my favourite story is of the "frightful explosion" which occured on 7th August 1860:

Carlisle Journal 07 August 1860

EXPLOSION CAUSED BY A THIEF

On Friday night a frightful explosion, arising out of a robbery, took place at the Crown Tavern, Islington. It appears that about a quarter to nine a man went into the tap-room, unscrewed the gas-fittings, and took them away. The consequence of this was that gas escaped through the crevices of the door, and the bar being lighted up there was an explosion – the whole of the front of the house was blown out. Twelve persons, including the landlord, were at the bar drinking, and all of them were severely burned, having been blown about in all directions. They were removed to the Great Northern Hospital in Maiden Lane.

Finally, the last article, entitled "An Island Honeymoon", refers to the marriage at Holy Trinity Church on 13th September 1957, of Miss Joyce Jackaman to Mr Patrick Bucknell of Cloudesley Road .  Following a reception at the Crown - where else? - the couple set off for a honeymoon in the Isle of White.  Who was this Patrick Bucknell?  None other than Mick Bucknell's elder brother!  You can see a photo of him, aged 14, at the far right of the crowd in front of the bus outside Doolan's Grocery, in the Gallery, here.

Following a tip-off from a Barnsbury resident visiting Thornhill Gardens, Jenny has discovered a patch of wooden paving blocks at the bottom of Penton Street, in front of Nos 90-92 Pentonville Road, where the asphalt surface has worn away - see below.  The blocks extend throughout the forecourt area right out to the road.  The story of how they came to be there is quite an interesting one - well, I think so anyway!

Up to the beginning of the 19th century the streets of London had not changed much since Roman times and were mostly in a dreadful state.  Apart from the use of stone cobbles in more salubrious areas, most streets were little more than dirt tracks with gravel-filled potholes.  When it rained they became rivers of mud and excrement, mostly horse manure.  This was a classic "Tragedy of the Commons"; in the absence of a central administration, the building and maintenance of London streets was the responsibility of innumerable small parishes, which typically they discharged in a haphazard and neglectful manner.

Then after the Napoleonic wars a Mr J L McAdam invented the "macadam" technique, "layers of carefully graded small stones,bound if necessary with clay or cement, impacted by rolling and having only a shallow camber" to quote a good summary of the history of London's streets by Hannah Renier.  At about the same time, improved transportation by rail and sea meant high quality granite became available from places like Aberdeen.  Granite "setts" - square or rectangular cobbles about 4x6 inches - became the surfacing of choice for streets which could afford them. From about 1870 onwards, there was an increasing tendency to coat both granite setts and macadam with tar, bitumen or asphalt (bitumen mixed with gravel) for an improved and longer lasting surface (in the case of macadam, this became known as "tarmacadam", from which "tarmac" is derived).

But from the mid century onwards, wooden blocks started to be used instead of granite, and wood-paved streets became surprisingly popular in the late 19th century and well into the 20th.  Throughout this time, there was a lively competition between the three types of surfacing, cobbles, macadam and wood, with suitability for horse carriages being the main criterion for choosing between them.  Granite setts were probably the most durable and best for the horses, but relatively expensive and very noisy.  Macadam was cheaper but required much maintenance and was slippery especially in the form of tarmacadam.  Wooden blocks were also slippery, but less so than asphalt, and by the end of the century were probably the most popular choice for London streets outside the City and Docklands.  Such was the demand for high quality wood that in 1898 the Jarrah Timber and Wood Company was set up specifically to grow and import Jarrah timber from Australia!

The history of London's wooden streets is documented in an excellent blog by Ian Mansfield, here.  The extraordinary popularity of wooden paving is demonstrated by the Bartholomews map of 1928, below, taken from that blog.  All the streets marked in yellow are wood!  Blue marks the use of granite setts, macadam is marked by very faint pink, and green is compressed asphalt (first introduced in 1869 on Threadneedle Street by the Val de Travers Company).  Streets without any colouring are presumably simple dirt and gravel.

As the 20th century progressed, travel by horse was increasingly displaced by the automobile, for which tarmacadam was clearly preferable.  Then after the second world war, most of the old wooden blocks were dug up for fuel, with those which were impregnated with tar apparently burning particularly well! 

For a much more detailed history of the use of wooden blocks in London, see the entertaining "Roads were not built for Cars", here. 

So how were the streets of Islington surfaced, particularly those of the Cloudesley Estate?  Looking closely at the Bartholomews map, above, it seems that in 1928, Pentonville Road, Liverpool Road and Essex Road were all paved with granite setts, while Upper Street, including its extensions North to Holloway Road and South along St Johns Street and Roseberry Avenue, was wooden blocks.  The rest of Barnsbury was either macadam or just dirt and gravel in the case of the Cloudesley Estate.  We have tried to confirm this last with mixed success.  Images of the area are inconclusive.  The engraving of the infants school on Cloudesley Street below might be taken as showing cobbles but this could just be artistic licence.  The lithograph of Holy Trinity Church in Cloudesley Square seems to show residents walking about on a sandy surface or even turf.  To investigate further I questionned one of the workmen digging up Cloudesley Road for laying cable fibre.  He said he'd come across layers of stone cobbles in some streets nearby (Upper Street?) but there was no such evidence in Cloudesley Road.  The rather disappointing conclusion seems to be that when the streets of the Cloudesley Estate were first laid out they were simple dirt and gravel and remained as such until tarmacadamed late into the 20th century.  By the way, don't be fooled by the patches of cobbles on the pavements of Cloudesley Road.  These were almost certainly decorative features introduced as part of gentrification in the 1970s.

Finally, what of Jenny's patch of wooden blocks on Pentonville Road?  According to two sources, British History Online and a wonderful blog called Jane's London, these paved the forecourt of HW Wilkins & Sons, a marble merchant at 90-92 Pentonville Road.  We have a picture below - note that Pentonville Road itself is paved with stone cobbles.  Given that Wilkins was only established in 1860, this is the earliest date for the wooden blocks, and it is possible they were laid much later.

Does anyone have any further insights into this subject?

The Cloudesley Square Residents Association, a forerunner of our own association, was active during the first half of the 1980s and deserves to be celebrated for its many positive achievements which those of us living in the Square today may take for granted.

The Association had its own rather attractive logo (see above) and was set up by a group of stalwart residents, pioneers of the gentrification process which turned the Square from its derelict state at that time into its present-day splendour.  The first page of the 1984 Annual General Meeting, which is reproduced here, serves both to identify many Association members of that time and also to give a flavour of some of their major preoccupations.  One such was a five-year battle over noise, particularly, but also other unneighbourly activities associated with the Celestial Church of Christ which leased Holy Trinity Church from the London Diocese.  This culminated in a high court writ in 1985, financed by the residents themselves, after which there appears to have been some improvement and an uneasy truce until the Celestials finally moved on in 2018.  

Other major achievements of the Association included:

• Planting trees in the Square, largely paid for by the residents themselves!
• Reinstating the railings around the church and in front of many of the houses.
• Replacing the rather ugly concrete street lamps of the time with the much more attractive traditional ones we enjoy today.
• Persuading the Council and others to do something about derelict housing, rubbish, squatters and the feral children of Stonefield Street!
• Policing the traffic management scheme and introducing residents parking.  Interestingly, residents were initially split over this but parking in the Square by, for example, Post Office workers, lorries on their way to Smithfield, visitors to the Crown pub and market traders became such a problem that the present residents parking scheme won the day.

The "before and after" images below illustrate why we owe a debt of gratitude to the Association and its doughty members!

Thanks to Gilvrie from  Cloudesley Street for the postcard below of an atmospheric photo by Don McCullin entitled "Sheep going to the Slaughterhouse.  Early Morning, near Caledonian Road, London 1965" (© Don McCullin, courtesy Hamiltons Gallery).  Don McCullin is one of Britain's most famous photographers.  He was born in Finsbury Park and you can read about his early life and see more of his photos here.  Gilvrie actually worked with him on the Sunday Times magazine.

The sheep are in fact on Market Road, which at the time ran through the Metropolitan Cattle Market (later Caledonian Market).  The market itself, now Caledonian Park, was on the right and the slaughterhouses, now tennis courts, were on the left.  The market was established in 1855 by the City of London Corporation on what was previously Copenhagen Fields and was at the time the largest cattle market in London, possibly the world!  You can read all about it here on a marvellous site called "A London Inheritance".  Here below is a drawing of the market in its early days courtesy of the Islington Local History Centre.  To the West of the market was the notorious Belle Isle, home to various noxious trades associated with the slaughterhouses!

The market began declining around the first world war, becoming a flea market and eventually closing in the mid 1960s.  Don McCullin's photo must record one of the last times sheep were herded through the area.  Today, all that remains is the iconic clock tower, now in the middle of Caledonian Park, close to where the old Copenhagen House once stood.

Additional Note:  Ken Stevens has pointed out that, interestingly, there had been a previous attempt to establish a cattle market in Islington in competition with Smithfields.  This New Islington Market was the initiative of a Mr Perkins and was opened in 1836 on land bordered by Balls Pond Road and Southgate Road.  Sadly, the vested interests of Smithfields and its friends in the City meant that the new venture was never really successful and it closed in 1852, shortly before the Metropolitan Market opened.  You can read more about the new market here.   Shown below is a nice contemporary print from the 1849 London Illustrated News.

Laycock Farm:  For an account of the earlier history of the cattle trade check out this marvellous piece on the website of Laycock Primary school: https://www.laycock.islington.sch.uk/our-school/the-history-laycock .  From the early 1700s to the mid 1800s this was on the site of Laycock's Dairy Farm, one of the biggest in the country.  The school website also describes the later history of the site and is packed with images illustrating what life was like over the years.  Here's some below showing scenes of "Laycock's Farm and Cattle Lairs", courtesy of Islington Council.

Housing Development in the Early 19th Century

From the mid-1820s through to the mid-1850s there was an explosion of speculative housing development in Islington.  In a relatively short time what was previously a predominantly rural environment of mainly green fields for grazing cattle was transformed into a dense urban neighbourhood.  The Cloudesley Estate was one of the first such developments c1830.  Thereafter building spread rapidly, mainly to the North and West, to create the characteristic late Georgian and early Victorian terraces and squares which define what we know today as the Barnsbury Conservation Area.  This section of the website is an attempt to make sense of and visualise this development.

The image below is a map of present day Barnsbury (more or less) with the dates when house building began on various streets.  The dates have been taken almost exclusively from the invaluable "Streets With a Story" by Eric A Willats, downloadable for free here.

Clearly, these dates are only approximate.  For example the building of the Cloudesley Estate proceeded in fits and starts from the mid-1820s through to the mid-1830s (see here).  Moreover, isolated housing developments did already exist - all along Upper Street and Lower Street (now Essex Road), on Thornhill Road around what is now the Albion pub and to the East of there, near the workhouse, in Felix Terrace, Place and Steet (now Liverpool Road).  And not shown, to the South of the Cloudesley Estate, Pentonville was already largely built up.  But the map does give a sense of how major housing developments from the mid-1820s onwards spread mainly North and West thereafter.

Another way to visualise these developments is through maps of the time, which show actual streets and in some cases individual buildings at the time of publication.  Five extracts from such maps are shown below from 1817, 1835, 1843, 1850 and 1868.

1817 Map, E&B Baker

1835 Map, C&J Greenwood (Harvard)

1843 Map, D Rumsey

1850 Map, Cross, Extract (two panes stitched together)

1868 Map, Weller, Extract

Animation

Finally, these maps have been jiggled about and superimposed in sequence on a Powerpoint slide to give an animated illustration of the development of Barnsbury during the first half of the 19th century.  You can download the Powerpoint animation here (then click on the slideshow icon at the bottom right) or better, just click on the YouTube video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq1UxxMDX8M&feature=youtu.be

It's a bit clunky, but hopefully you'll get a real sense of this remarkable real estate development phenomenon.  Try doing it a few times and focusing on different areas, freezing the animation if necessary.  

Architectural Features

Interestingly, the Barnsbury development period takes place right at the cusp of the transition from Georgian to Victorian architectural styles.  These styles are summarised below (courtesy Daisy Mason and Melanie Backe-Hansen, Foxtons).  The Georgian period is usually defined as running from 1714 to 1837 with the last 7 years sometimes referred to as late-Georgian or Regency.  The Victorian period runs from Queen Victoria's accession in 1837 to her death in 1901.  Obviously, there was no dramatic change in styles overnight from 1836 to 1838!  In fact the majority of houses in Barnsbury's terraces and squares look distinctly "Georgian" to me  But have a close look the next time you're wandering our local streets and see if you can spot the differences in the light of the development history above!

I was going to start researching the history of pubs in or around the Cloudesley Estate but soon found I didn't need to when I came across the excellent "Pub Wiki" website (click here for all pubs in Islington).  This lists all pubs past and present in the area, and indeed in the whole of London and most of the South East!  For each pub there is a list of past owners (although curiously, not usually beyond 1944).  There are usually also one or more photos and often some interesting historical details. 

If anyone has additional information or their own stories to tell about any of these pubs please do get in touch - the easiest way is just to add a comment at the bottom of this page.

What is immediately apparent is that there used to be many more pubs than there are today!  Listed below are first the few pubs in the area which are still going strong, then the far larger number which no longer exist as pubs, having been converted into private residences or offices or in one case a church (The Church on the Corner) and in another having been apparently been bombed out of existence (The Prince of Brunswick)!  All pictures are from Pub Wiki unless indicated otherwise.  Clicking on the names links to the current website in the case of pubs present and to the Pub Wiki entry in the case of pubs past.

Pubs Present

The Crown, 116 Cloudesley Road.  My local, and the best pub in the world!

Drapers Arms, 44 Barnsbury Street.  Excellent gastropub and host to Coudesley Association meetings.

The Albion, 10 Thornhill Road.  Fine pub which existed as the Albion Tea House long before the Cloudesley Estate was developed.  Huge garden.

Here below is a splendid photo of the Albion in its glory days c1880s, which Kieran Garvey has unearthed.  Note the huge sign advertising Watneys Ales and the horse drawn carriage poking out of what later became a garage.

Pig and Butcher, 80 Liverpool Road.  Another gastropub famous for its meat dishes!  Current photo.  Used to be Minogues.

The Regent, 201 Liverpool Road.  Lively venue on the corner of Theburton Street.  Current photo.  Used to be various different restaurants.

The Foxglove, 209 Liverpool Road.  Used to be the Barnsbury, which closed, and has now re-opened as the Foxglove, as pointed out by Nick Brealey in a comment below.  I haven't been there, and it's now closed because of lockdown, but it looks nice on the website and it gets excellent reviews! 

Pubs Past

Cloudesley Arms, 34 Cloudesley Place.  Now residential.  Freehold sold by Cloudesley Charity in the 1930s.

The Duke of Wellington, 74 Richmond Road.  Converted into offices.

The Eclipse, 164 Barnsbury Road.  Converted into residential property with interesting Art Deco frontage.

Kings Arms, 64 Barnsbury Road.  Now The Church on the Corner.

King of Denmark, 9 Cloudesley Road.  Now offices.

Prince of Brunswick, 127 Barnsbury Road.  Apparently bombed out of existence during the 2nd World War!

Rising Sun, 55 Brooksby Street.  Now residential.

Suffolk Arms, 10 Cloudesley Road.  No picture.

White Conduit House, 14 Barnsbury Road / Penton Street.  The original site of the famous tea room and gardens.  Now the Little Georgia restaurant.

White Conduit House started life in the late 17th century as a tea garden where city dwellers could escape for the grassy fields and relatively clean air of Islington.  According to Oliver Goldsmith it was a site where "the inhabitants of London often assemble to celebrate a feast of hot rolls and butter".  For over a century from the 1750s to the 1850s the curved front of White Conduit House and its pleasure gardens hosted not just cricket matches played on White Conduit Fields to the North West, but a wide range of entertainments of all kinds, as illustrated in the images below.  A good account of White Conduit can be found in British History Online, here.

Update, December 2019.  Little Georgia Restaurant, at No 10 Penton St where it meets Dewey Road, is inscribed "White Conduit House" at the top - see processed photo below.  Clearly it is not the original building, but it marks the site, which we can confirm using a screenshot from the excellent Layers of London website, where a Greenwood map of 1828 is superimposed on a street map from today.  The gardens to the East behind White Conduit House presumably formed part of the facility.  They are now for the most part occupied by buildings between Tolpuddle St and Dewey Rd, although the South part of Culpeper Gardens is still evidence of the gardens today.

Update, February 2022.  As mentioned elsewhere in this website, White Conduit Fields was the birthplace of the MCC, owner of the Lord's cricket ground.  Richard from Cloudesley Square has unearthed this entertaining account of how a Mr Thomas Lord was responsible for this development, apparently actually physically moving the turf via a number of sites before establishing the present day Lord's in St John's Wood.

Trinity school, now a building at 16A Cloudesley Street, on the corner with Cloudesley Square, has an interesting history, as the following extract from "Cloudesley: 500 Years in Islington" by Cathy Ross describes (see here for information on the schoolmasters at the school):

"... in December 1829 a new project was conceived - building an infant school. Following a search for a suitable site the feoffees agreed to lease a plot to the enterprise and a ‘neat edifice in the pointed style’ was erected, designed by local architect George Legg and built by William Webb of Clerkenwell. The feoffees granted an 81 year lease on the site at a ground rent of £15 and the building cost largely came from donations, including £52 raised by the sale of tickets to ‘an interesting lecture on pneumatic chemistry’.

The little school opened in 1830. This was a private school where donors or subscribers bought the right to nominate children – two children for every donation of 10 guineas. By 1835 240 children were enrolled in the infant school and 263 in the Sunday school which was held in the same building. In 1839 the building was enlarged to become a ‘National School’ accommodating 133 older boys as well as 224 infants."

The school was taken over by the London County Council (LCC) in 1905, closed down as "unfit for purpose", re-opened in 1908 as the "Cloudesley Street Temporary Council School" then closed down again in 1915 (at this time, the LCC also established the school on Dowry Street between Stonefield Street and Cloudesley Road, which remains to this day).  The building on Cloudesley Street was then let to the "Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid Club".  Cathy Ross again:

"In 1910 the Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid Club had opened on the school premises, bringing an American connection to the Stonefield Estate. Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid was the wife of the American ambassador and an energetic philanthropist. The Holy Trinity club was one of a network she had established in American cities and were designed to provide improving activities for young people in deprived communities. Both Whitelaw Reid and her daughter Lady Jean Templeton Ward, a great beauty of her day [see image], took a personal interest in the Islington club. Lady Ward continued her connection into the 1950s, paying much of the rebuilding costs after a fire in 1958. The youth club continued to run, under the auspices of the Mary Ward Settlement, and in 1958 Cloudesley sold the fire-damaged building outright to the Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid Clubs for Young People Ltd, for £2,200110. The building was extensively renovated with grant support from Islington Metropolitan Borough and the City Parochial Foundation. When the Whitelaw Reid youth club closed in the 1960s the building was sold on to a related organisation, the Grubb Institute."

In Holy Trinity Church there is a plaque commemorating Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid and two others devoted to Kate Gallwey and Maud Alice Bartlett, respectively leader and deputy leader of the club for 30 years.

In the 1970s, 16A Cloudesley Street was redeveloped, retaining its quirky but rather attractive exterior, and was occupied by the Grubb Institute, which "builds on a history of more than 50-years at the intersection of organisational dynamics, systems thinking and integral psychology" (!).  Finally, in 2018, it became the home of the Barnsbury Housing Association, of which more here. 

There was also a school (“the South Islington and British Schools, later used as a cardboard manufacturer”) built in 1841 on Denmark Terrace, later renamed as 1-23 Copenhagen St, so presumably at the South-West corner of the Cloudesley Estate.  There is no trace of the building there today, and little information about the school is available, but we do have these charming images of schoolchildren there, in 1899.  

The London Fever Hospital

As illustrated in the 19th Century Timeline, here, 19th century London was rife with infectious diseases.  As part of the fight against the waves of epidemics sweeping across the capital, especially in the 1830s and 1840s, the London Fever Hospital was opened on Liverpool Road opposite Cloudesley Square in 1848.  One hundred years later it joined the NHS as the Royal Free Hospital, closing down in 1975.  After staying empty for a few years it was re-opened as the handsome housing development we know today.  This major landmark next to the Cloudesley Estate has a fascinating history described in the attached article:

Download "London Fever Hospital, Liverpool Road"

For more details, including extensive descriptions of the redevelopment, see this LocalLocalHistory website.

“Belle Isle” (the name is ironic!) refers to an area to the east of York Way (previously known as Maiden Lane – see maps below) as it crosses Brewery Road, which throughout the 19th century was notorious for the noxious industries and trades which were carried on there. It is relevant to our history in two ways. Firstly, it seems reasonable to assume that a number of the residents of the Cloudesley Estate were employed there, and the Occupations revealed in the records tend to confirm this. Secondly, the toxic presence of Belle Isle has been cited as a major reason for the decline in the area, particularly west of Caledonian Road, as those who could afford it fled to more salubrious and sweeter-smelling localities further North.

The following extracts from the highly entertaining “In Strange Company”, by James Greenwood, 1874, gives a flavour of the place:

“The spot that holds the horse slaughter houses is modestly called "The Vale;" the first turning beyond is, with goblin like humour, designated "Pleasant Grove." It is hardly too much to say, that almost every trade banished from the haunts of men, on account of the villanous smells and the dangerous atmosphere which it engenders is represented in Pleasant Grove. There are bone boilers, fat-melters, "chemical works," firework makers, lucifer-match factories, and several most extensive and flourishing dust yards, where - at this delightful season so excellent for ripening corn - scores of women and young girls find employment in sifting the refuse of dust-bins, standing knee-high in what they sift.”

Greenwood also describes the "London Necropolis Company" where bodies were stored before being transported by rail to out of town cemeteries!  Just across York Way is Agar Town, known locally as "Ague Town" or "the worst slum in London", now the fairly pleasant looking Elm Village estate.

 According to British History Online, the enterprises located at Belle Isle include the following:

Tilekilns (Adams, later Tylor’s)
Coach and Cart Grease Factory (Warner’s)
Chemical Laboratory (Margett’s)
Varnish Factory (Wallis & Sons, also Schweizer’s, Turner’s and others
Soap-Boiling (Adams again)
Enamel Black and Japanning
Blood Manure (Fretwell’s)
Fat Melting
Gut-Scraping (Sausage Skins)
Condemned Meat Processing

Many of these trades were associated with the many slaughterhouses located in Belle Isle or nearby, of which the most important belonged to John Atchelor. According to one account:

“The Granddaddy of London horse slaughterers was Jack Atcheler. He held the royal warrant and, as 'Knacker to the Queen' and something of a sporting man, he was a minor mid-Victorian celebrity... A sign on the wall outside Atcheler's office at 186, York Road read:

John Atcheler

Horse Slaughterer To Her Majesty
Horse Grease Harness Oils
Patent Grease For Axles
Orders Promptly Attended To
Commit No Nuisance"

As time went on the factories at Belle Isle appear to have become a little more respectable. By 1970, Adams’ tilekilns had been taken over by John Tylor & Sons, an instrument manufacturer. Tylor built a large tower for delivering constant water pressures to test the instruments. The firm also appears to have expanded into engine manufacturing (see image). Later on the works was taken over by a plastic manufacturer which emblazoned it with the logo “Ebonite” and as such it remained a conspicuous landmark until 1983 when it was demolished. For a more detailed account see here, page 10.

Recently. I visited present-day Belle Isle as part of a self-guided walk - "Wrong Side of the Tracks" - starting in King's Cross.  There are few remaining signs of past glories but the area is still a hive of entrepreneurial activity, with small factories, workshops and a host of design studios and small media firms in extremely smart offices.  How times change!

Update, April 2024

Bob Fellows has kindly provided us with this splendid photo of "The Belle Isle Wheelers" from 1900.  One of the cyclists is his grandfather's brother:

Hunting Ghosts - Cloudesley Road - Past and Present

She’s done it again! The indefatigable Jenny Tatton has been researching the many shops and other commercial premises which used to be a prominent feature of Cloudesley Road. You can download the fascinating results of this research here:

Download: “Hunting Ghosts_Part I Updated Dec 2022”

Download:  "Hunting Ghosts_Part ll_Index Updated Dec 2022

Update, December 2022.  The Downloads above are the result of a massive updating exercise carried out by Jenny using the new data provided by Mick Bucknell - see below.  It is now clear that until about 40 years ago Cloudesley Road was a major shopping and business centre supporting a large community of people who both lived and worked there.  Together, these documents now represent a really detailed research resource which we hope to enrich with the memories of people who have lived in the area for long enough to be able to give us insights into the social history of those times.  If you're one of those people or you know someone who is, then we'd love to hear from you.  Please do comment below or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Part I is essentially a guided walk up and down Cloudesley Road (not forgetting Culpepper Park) with photos and short descriptions of all the “ghost” shops, studios, and pubs which used to ply their trade in days gone by. The map below shows the main premises covered.

Part II is a detailed database of all the proprietors of the premises described in Part I, and more, with names, occupations, dates and cross references. The data in this case comes from Commercial Directories.

What emerges clearly from this research is that in the past and up until quite recently Cloudesley Road was a “bustling village full of industrious residents” engaged in a wide range of commercial activities.  Jenny has already spoken with some of our older residents who can remember these times and we hope that more will come forward to share their priceless memories.

Your walks down Cloudesley Road will never be the same again!

Later note.  In contrast to Cloudesley Road, Cloudesley Square has always been almost entirely residential, with just a few commercial, or semi-commercial properties - see here for a list.

Update, September 2020.  Jenny has now updated Part I of Hunting Ghosts (see download above), with many new stories and photos.  Here's my favourite picture - images of a ship and an aeroplane scratched into the brickwork "at child height" in the brickwork of a house on the east side of Cloudesley Road, presumably during World War II.

Later Addition, October 2022: Mick Bucknell's Data 

Our hunt for the ghosts of Cloudesley past has taken a great leap forward with the discovery of a treasure trove of record cards compiled by Mick Bucknell, which record in detail all the shops in Cloudesley Road between Copenhagen Street and Richmond Avenue, from when they were built in 1830 to the present day, together with their residents.  Mick contacted us via the website to say he'd been born at the Royal Free Hospital in 1952 and has lived on Cloudesley Road all his life - "Gold Dust", to coin a phrase!

The first thing we've done with Mick's data is to create a spreadsheet chart showing all shops with an indication of what trades were carried out and when.  We were then able to analyse the data in various ways.  You can download the spreadsheet below:

Download: "Hunting Ghosts - Cloudesley Road - Past and Present (Part III)"

If you can't read Excel files then try the PDF version here.  And here's a small version of the chart to give a favour of the overall pattern of shops without the detail.

Clearly, this chart supports Jenny's designation of Cloudesley Road as a busy and bustling commercial centre.  But it extends and expands that picture in several important respects. 

Firstly, whilst Jenny's records rarely extended further back than 1870, the directories which Mick used (Kelly's and Robson's) mostly have records dating right back to when the properties were first built around 1830.  This means that quite a few shops just don't show up in Jenny's analysis - sometimes they seem to have become private residences or sometimes merged into larger commercial entities (Bull's Yard? Barnett's Yard?).  In fact there are a number of sub-districts of such "early" shops, especially on the West side of Cloudesley Road.

Secondly, remember that Mick's data only extends as far South as Copenhagen Street whereas we know from Jenny's work that extensive commercial development once characterised the area on both sides of the present Cloudesley Road right down to Chapel Market, taking in what used to be known as White Conduit Street, the present day Culpepper Gardens (where all properties have been demolished) and probably right across the presnt day Sainsbury's car park.  In other words, although we can identify a shop population of about 40 from Mick's records the true number may be at least double this.  Truly this was a major commercial centre right through the Victorian period and well into the 20th century.

Thirdly, note the huge variety of trades and professions and goods and services supported.  An attempt has been made to record, categorise and colour code these based on the directory records but this probably does not do justice to the range of activities on offer.  Within a relatively small area it was evidently possible to purchase more or less any household good or trade imaginable as well as all sorts of artisan services.  Significantly, these correlate very well with the range of trades and professions of private residents which we have identified and documented in previous analyses of the Cloudesley Estate (mainly Cloudesley Square and Stonefield Street to date) - see the History > Jobs and Crafts section of the website.  The picture which emerges is of a relatively self-contained community of people who all live, shop and work in the same small area - as very different picture to the Barnsbury of today.

As to the evolution of trades over the years, the basic functions such as Bakeries, Dairies, Grocers, Pubs and so on seem to have stayed fairly constant, with other more specialised activities evolving as one would expect as technology and fashions change (boot to saddles to cycles to cars; cat meat to butchers to whole foods!).  There is also a less successful trend discernable towards larger scale factory-type enterprises, perhaps culminating in the Linalux/Rongas complex at nos.119 to 125, which mass produced successively artificial flowers, gas mantels, "reflectors", the toys (especially toy soldiers!).  Interestingly, Cathy Ross reports that Dove Brothers, who already had a large workshop in Milton's Yard (now Dove's Yard just to the East of Cloudesley Road, and owned the leaseholds on nos. 40-114 next to it, may have applied for planning permission to pull down these houses and replace them with workshops or a factory.  In the event, this proposal was not popular and was refused  - a lucky escape!

Two big questions remain:  why and how did the "Cloudesley Road Commercial District" come to be, and what led to its demise - shockingly, of all the 40 commercial premises described here, only two survive today - the Mini-Mart on the corner of Copenhagen Street, and the Crown Pub.

The bar chart above shows how the total number of shops changed over time (subject to the caveats mentioned in the download).  Clearly, there were a substantial number trading right from the outset, which grew to a peak around 1870, then declined somewhat but stayed fairly stable until the 1960s.  There was then a catastrophic decline in the 1970s 80s, and 90s resulting in the almost exclusively residential district of today.

Our first tentative conclusion is that the first shops in the 1830s were purpose-built as shops, mainly on the West side.  In other words this is the same conclusion we reached about the Crown pub, also based on Mick's data.  It is supported by a close examination of the buildings which were previously shops, many of which have step-free access, large windows, and quite elaborate moulded lintels typical of a retail establishment (see particularly the top of the West side up to Richmond Avenue).

Our second conclusion is that the kiss of death for these shops was gentrification!  As more and more buildings were "done up" into attractive residential dwellings by gentrifiers over the 60s to 90s period, often with the backing of the Council, the rents and rates charged to shopkeepers in Cloudesley Road must have risen to unsustainable levels where the only sensible response would be to sell up and move on.  In fact we have anecdotal evidence that this was the case.  Moreover, it is surely significant that one of the leading lights of the Barnsbury Tenants Association (previously the South West Islington Tenants' Association), vehemently opposed to gentrification, was none other than Danny Doolan, long-established greengrocer at 135 Cloudesley Road from 1951 to 73 (and before that, Mrs Mary Doolan 1947 to 50)!  In the event, the Tenants Association lost out to the rival Barnsbury Action Group, spearheaded by the arch-gentrifier architect Kenneth Pring.  Pring's group also brought in a traffic management scheme for the Cloudesley Estate which is still in place today (a harbinger of the socially divisive Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) initiatives currently being implemented by Islington Council today?).  The rest is history!  In our extensive analysis of the remarkable and still contentious gentrification of Barnsbury, here, we tended to come down on the side of the gentrifiers - after all, Barnsbury is now undoubtedly one of the most pleasant places to live in London.  On the other hand, the analysis above serves to remind us that this came at a cost - the virtual elimination of a previous community of shopkeepers and traders who are now largely forgotten.  This press cutting about Cloudesley Road (also in the Gentrification article) from The Journal of 1972 captures perfectly the strong but conflicting emotions about the gentrification of Cloudesley Road and the concurrent demise of its shops at that time.  It also has this great photo of Danny Doolan in his shop!

Just to the North of the Cloudesley Estate, at the junction of Liverpool Road and what is now Barnsbury Street (see old maps), was St Mary's Workhouse.  The workhouse was a grim but important feature of Georgian and Victorian life, especially after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.  The history of workhouses is well documented in a remarkable website compiled by Peter Higginbotham, here.  Of particular interest to Cloudesley residents is his section on Islington Workshops, here, from which much of the following, including images, has been taken.

The building of St Mary's Workhouse started in 1776 and by 1814, according to Higginbotham, "there were 407 inmates, 95 men, 186 women, 64 boys, 48 girls, and 11 lunatics [sic] with room for about 50 more".  In other words, a huge establishment.  In 1869 a new, larger workhouse was built on St John's Road near Archway.

Life in the workhouses was of course grim.  Inmates were kept in spartan conditions and were assigned hard labour such as the mindless task of preparing "oakum" - tarred fibre used for caulking - by unravelling old ropes.  On the other hand, there was probably a huge variation in conditions from workhouse to workhouse, and at St Mary's the staff at least appeared to have meant well and attempted to do the best for their charges with the limited resources available to them.  See here for their Diet-Table.  Higginbotham includes an extract from a review by The Lancet in 1865 which paints quite a cheery picture - see below:

Perhaps a better impression of the reality of workhouse life can be glimpsed by studying the records of individual inmates.  It is possible via Ancestry to access workhouse admission and discharge records and the St Mary's Liverpool Road entries for 1866 are available here and offer a horrifying insight into the appalling and shattered lives of many islington residents at the time, as the following screenshots show.  The admission records reveal that inmates came from neighbourhoods all round the Cloudesley Estate, particularly from Caledonian Road (see the George Gissing description, here) and Copenhagen Street, often whole families at a time, and hint at the underlying tragedies involved.  The discharge records are scarcely less dismaying, with common destinations including "Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum", "Infant Poor House", "Fever Hospital", and of course "Died".

Download Records

 As the last image in the download starkly reveals, between April 27 and May 5, 1866, Mary Ann Jones, Charwoman and widow, aged 78, was admitted from No 2 Cloudesley Street.  "Cause of Seeking Relief" is, as usual, listed as "Distress".  Apart from this, however, cursory examination of the records reveals no other instances of Cloudesley Estate residents being admitted to the workhouse in 1866.  This might suggest that the area was relatively well off compared to neighbouring streets such as Caledonian Road.  Similarly, although there are several instances of inmates being discharged into "the service of [name and local address]..." no such examples involving households in the Cloudesley Estate have been found, although no doubt a steady traffic both out of and into the area would have occured over the years.

Finally, to end on a slightly more uplifting note, from other sources entirely we learn of one Charles Arthur Holland-Goodwin who was born as an illegitimate child to his mother Elizabeth in 1902 in the St John's Road workhouse.  But by 1961, he has married Rose Juliff, enjoys presumably steady employment as a Stationery Checker, and is living at ...  16 Cloudesley Square! (My house - Nick).  More on this redemptive story later!

Around 1909, the back gardens between Stonefield Street and Cloudesley Road were redeveloped into Dowrey Street and a new school was built there - Cloudesley Physically Handicapped (PH) School.  You can see the school buildings marked on an OS map of the time, below.

It has proved curiously difficult to find any records about this school.  The only photos we have are these rather blurred aerial RAF images which Florence has hunted down (use the church to orient yourself).

We are fortunate, however, to have been contacted by Peter Lambert, who attended the school during the 1940s and he has kindly shared his memories of this time in this charming account:

Download: "Memories of Cloudesley PH School", by Peter Lambert

You will learn here about the authoritarian Mr Gush, evacuation during the blitz, christmas parties in Caledonian Road, trips to the theatre and to the seaside in Kent, and many other anecdotes from this distant period during and immediately after the Second World War.  Despite the hardships, Peter ends his memories with this:

"I hope these notes will assist you in building a record of the history of the Cloudesley school - a school which I know helped many young handicapped people overcome their disabilities and set them up for life.

I for one feel blessed for having spent those important years in the company of such dedicated staff and of course my fellow students."

Here are before and after pictures of Peter, aged about 13, and as he is today.  Also a picture of a Dennis Bus of the type which he refers to in his account.

Does anyone else have information about Cloudesley PH School?  Peter would love to hear from you and so would we all.