Newington Green, in the Mildmay Ward of the Borough of Islington, North London is soaked in history. King Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) kept a hunting lodge there. Several streets in the area take their name from that period, such as King Henry’s Walk, Boleyn Road (formerly Ann Boleyn’s Walk), Wolsey Road and Queen Elizabeth’s Walk.
Maggie Murray lived on Mildmay Road for five decades from 1970. May, a founder member of Format Photographers for women photographers, took pictures of her manor. You can see more of them in a zine published by Cafe Royal.
We see Mildmay Park, developed in the 1850s when the aristocrat Lady Jane St. John Mildmay (1764-1857), doyenne of Eton Square, Belgravia, sold off parts of her Mildmay Estate for building development. The pub on Wolsey Road (now flats) was called ‘The Lady Mildmay’ in her honour.
The Mildmay family’s links to the area also hark back to Henry VIII’s time. Sir Walter Mildmay was the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Elizabeth I. He was one of the special commissioners in the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, and founded Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1584.
As for other notable milestones. The area around Kingsbury Road was bombed during WW2 and the damaged houses were replaced by estates in the 1950s. You can still wonder past the now dilapidated Jewish Burial Ground and walk up St Jude Street for a drink at Old Henry’s Freehouse, originally known as the Railway Tavern.
And there’s the aforementioned Newington Green, known as an area of political and religious dissent in the 17th century. It’s where Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) , the 18th century feminist philosopher, set up a radical school. The writer Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe and more) attended the nearby Academy run by Charles Morton, a British nonconformist minister and founder of an early dissenting academy. Oh, and numbers 52-55 Newington Green date from 1658 and are the oldest terraced houses in London.
St Jude Street, 1973
Sweet Shop Mildmay Park, 1973
1976
An outside toilet on Boleyn Road
The Maville Estate says no to the Common Market
1972
Mildmay Road
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