COMMONS & OPEN SPACES 191 



dences, one of them the Manor House. An old " moated 

 grange," or barn, belonging to the ancient Priory, gives 

 its name to the public-house, Highbury Barn, the goal of 

 motor omnibuses. The moat was only filled up fifty 

 years ago, and the old buildings pulled down, after en- 

 joying some notoriety as a Tea Garden for over a century. 

 A part of the present Fields was called " the Reed- 

 mote," or " Six Acre Field," and is also shown on old 

 maps as " Mother Field." When Islington Spa was a 

 fashionable resort, and Sadler's Wells at the height of its 

 prosperity, the houses facing the Fields were built. On 

 the north-west the row is inscribed in large letters, 

 "Highbury Terrace, 1789," and this, according to old 

 guide-books, " commands a beautiful prospect." On the 

 east lies another substantial row of eighteenth-century 

 mansions, and the inhabitants are proud to point out to 

 strangers No. 25 Highbury Place as the house in which 

 Mr. Chamberlain lived, from the age of nine until he was 

 eighteen, when he went to live in Birmingham. His 

 present home, now so well known, was built in 1879, 

 and was named in remembrance of Highbury Place. In 

 the early years of the nineteenth century several well- 

 known people were living in these houses. John Nichols, 

 the biographer of Hogarth, who was for fifty years editor 

 of the Gentleman's Magazine, died there in 1826. A few 

 years later a historian of Islington describes Highbury 

 Place as *' thirty-nine houses built on a large scale, but 

 varying in size, all having good gardens, and some of 

 them allotments of meadow land in the front and rear 

 The road is private, and is frequented only by the car- 

 riages passing to and from the several dwellings situated 

 between the village and Highbury House." This de- 

 scription draws a very rural picture, of which nothing 



