walk/tour
Outside Canonbury station, Wallace Road, N1 2PG
A walk through this leafy corner of Islington that explores its rich history and varied communities, from dissenting academies to missionary training schools, radical drinking clubs to synagogues – and asks why some historical sites are commemorated and remembered, and others are neglected and forgotten.
Canonbury
141, 341, 476, 236, 30, 73
Tour ends near Dalston Kingsland station; Dalston Junction is also nearby as are many bus routes
There is a toilet and cafes partway through the tour
The walk is on level ground (mainly pavement) with a few opportunities to sit down along the way, but not for every stop.
Walking tour
11:00–13:00
How to book
Please create a free visitor account to book your festival tickets.
Newington Green has long been the home of meeting places for very different communities – of religious dissenters and radical thinkers, Christian charitable workers, campaigners for workers’ rights, and spaces for getting together to have a drink and sing karaoke. This tour through 400 years of history will look at the ones we remember and how we commemorate them – and the ones that have been lost and forgotten.
You might know the name of Newington Green through its associations with the 18th-century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft – whose memorial was unveiled there in 2020 – and other well-known names such as Daniel Defoe, educated here in the 1670s. They were part of an energetic community of religious dissenters, many of whom were connected with the Unitarian church, which disagreed with Church of England doctrine and who were excluded from public life.
In the 19th century, the rapid growth of Victorian London swallowed up the former village, turning it into an inner suburb. The booming population was accompanied by an upsurge in poverty, overcrowding and disease, and the larger area of Mildmay Park – so called after the Mildmay family, which owned land there from the 17th century – became identified with another community: the missionaries William and Catherine Pennefather, the deaconesses they trained and the charitable work they did in the area and in the East End, which has left the legacy of Mildmay Mission Hospital.
Jews who had fled Russian pogroms and were well-off enough to leave the East End put down roots around Newington Green in the 19th century and built a splendid synagogue in Poets Road – sadly demolished after it closed in 1967. Another important Jewish site in the area, the burial ground in Kingsbury Road, is going to be restored after years of neglect.
Unofficial, secular community spaces include a surviving example of a working men’s club, a popular local pub and a hipster club/gallery.
The assortment of buildings – many of them adapted to modern uses rather different to their original design – as well as the ghosts of former structures raises the question of what characterises an area and how do we decide what to preserve and what to demolish.
The walk covers a short distance over about two hours with no steps or obstacles, and public transport is available at both ends. Dress for the unpredictable London weather.
