Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Up Caledonian Road to Copenhagen Fields with John Rogers

John Rogers takes us on another London walk. This time it's from Gray's Inn Road up the Caledonian Road to Caledonian Park in Islington.

I was in Housmans bookshop [09:00] the other week and emerged with a novel by Rose Macaulay. I still haven't got the hang of this "left wing" thing.

1 comment:

Dominic said...

Thank you so much for posting that: a very nostalgic walk. From the start of Caledonian Rd this was Arnie Gibbons' ward, when he was an Islington councillor from 2002. And it was nice to see my old house at 19:40ish.

A very mixed area: in Thornhill Crescent (just off the Cally, more like posher Barnsbury) there resided the Blairs, Margaret Hodge and Emily Thornberry (all at the same time) and (Lord) Chris Smith moved to Thornhill Crescent.

Contrast that to the Caledonian Estate (really tough to deliver: so many staircases, so many steep steps) or the Bemerton. It's a lasting legacy of the Lib Dem council of the 2000s that the old Market Estate was re-developed in the way described in the video. I remember delivering the long corridors of the old estate when they'd be blackened from arson and littered with syringes & used condoms. The old estate was literally sinking, and its plumbing being eroded, by lime from the Victorian cattle market. The replacement is so much the better.

Still a fabulous and really characterful place to live, I do miss it!