Walking London’s Civil War defences in Islington with John Rogers

From the blurb on YouTube

Waterfield Fort was at the top of St John's Street, exactly where Spa Green Estate stands today, linked eastwards by trenches running along Sebastian Street to a huge fort at Mount Mills off the Goswell Road. Westwards, the lines cut to New River Head's circular reservoir and on to Mount Pleasant, east of Black Mary's Hole and another city dump. In between, a covered walkway was cut up the hill that is now Amwell Street, to Islington Pond, which would soon became the extant reservoir in Claremont Square. 

The author, Guy Mannes Abbott, makes the link between this system of fortifications that stretched eastwards through Shoreditch and Whitechapel to Wapping, built to protect the fledgling English Revolution, and the Utopian aspirations of the municipal architecture of Berthold Lubetkin built in the old London borough of Finsbury. 

This video starts at the old Roman wall at Aldersgate then passes the Barbican. We then follow civil war line of communication from Mount Mills, just off Goswell Road, along Sebastian Street to Northampton Square, up St John Street to Spa Green Estate site of Waterfield Fort. We then walk through Spa Green to the site of the New River Head and down Rosebery Ave to Mount Pleasant Fort. The final stage of this classic London walking tour goes up Amwell Street to Claremont Square site of the Fort Royal. 

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.