Barnsbury

Barnsbury must surely be one of the most extensive and best-preserved Georgian/early-Victorian districts in London, and yet I wonder how many people visit it. The buildings are relatively small in scale - including many cottages and cottage-size semi's and terraces - and it's not half so well-known as, say, the overblown and much less interesting Notting Hill. The period properties were doubtless much restored in the great wave of gentrification that swept north London in the 1960s/1970s, but I suspect - although I'm willing to be corrected - the district never quite fell into the same extensive slumdom that afflicted more southerly parts of Islington. Anyway, here are some snapshots ...

I started from the Holloway Road, walking through the garden of (?derelict) St. Mary Magdalene. Across Liverpool Road, and down Ellington Street, I spotted this neglected solution to household pollution  - a peculiar construction, supposed to allow any falling soot to pour down onto the roof, rather than back down the chimney into the house. I'm fairly sure these were roundly mocked in the 19C as ineffective ...

 

A left turn into Arundel Square - which, unusually for the area, boasts houses equivalent in grandeur to those in Bayswater and Notting Hill. You get some idea of the size of the properties on the north side from this great example of window-tax avoidance (or possibly the owner disliked sunlight,since this useful blog post suggests the properties were built post abolition of the window tax) ...

The houses on the east have lovely ornate window-guards (or planter-guards? - I have always wondered if that was the original purpose for these iron decorations) ...

You get a better class of refuse in this part of town ...

Heading south on Thornhill Road, a very typical and beautifully proportioned 'villa' ...

Turning west in Barnsbury Square, spring is in the air ...

Houses situated in the corner of the square which wouldn't be amiss in Mayfair or St. James's ...

and more nice ironwork around the windows ...

A very plain but pleasant semi-detached in Thornhill Grove ...

Stucco-free brick on Lofting Road - but still a rather nice house ...

Some of its neighbours are even prettier ...

From Lofting Road back to Thornhill Road, past the quaint Albion pub, and to a plain but beautifully framed 'ghost sign' on the corner of Richmond Avenue ...

Richmond Avenue, sloping down towards Kings Cross, famously contains some ridiculous, joyful early 19C quirks - rows of sphinxes guarding Egypto-Georgian doorways, each studiously celebrating the battle of the Nile ...

The Egyptiana window guards here are completely marvellous ...

And some householders have really got into the spirit of the thing (were the eyes painted originally? it's perfectly possible, although I wonder if the rest of the sphinx was likewise coloured - now they are either dull white, grey or black) ...

As you get towards King's Cross, naturally the properties become squished closer together and altogether cheaper, like in Matilda Street ...

And then chocolate-box Barnsbury yields to the high-density housing of the twentieth century ...

That said, the Barnsbury Estate and its surroundings look well-maintained and respectable in their own way ... 

I finish my walk at Angel, with one of the nicest pieces of 'street art' in London, on Godson Street ... back to the 21st century ...