Islington Green
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Islington Green is a triangle of open land at the convergence of Upper Street and Essex Road (once called Lower Street) in the London Borough of Islington. It roughly marks the northern boundary between the modern district of the Angel with Islington Proper.
It has to be said that there is not much to Islington Green in modern times. But it is an important landmark that has given its name to the Screen on the Green cinema and a pleasant enough place to eat lunch in summer. Historically, it is not an old village green, like so many small green remnants in London (for example, Shacklewell Green), but a surviving patch of common land like Newington Green to the north, that was carved out of old manorial wasteland where local farmers and tenants had free grazing rights. (Before it became a part of London, Islington was a traditional pastoral, rather than an arable farming district.) The original land was far more extensive, but was largely built over in the 19th century.
Besides a dignified whitewashed memorial to the dead of both world wars, the green is notable for the statue of Sir Hugh Myddleton, designer of the New River that was so important to London's water supply from the 17th century onwards. The statue, fittingly, surmounts a fountain, but this, sadly, is no longer functioning. The New River itself once terminated about a kilometre to the south in Finsbury, but the section that can be still walked in modern times, the New River Walk, ends just to the north of the green off Essex Road. The north side of the green also carries a plaque to the once-famous Collins's Music Hall, which burned down in 1958. A Waterstone's bookshop now occupies the site.
