COMMONS & OPEN SPACES 191 
dences, one of them the Manor House. An old 44 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 44 the Reed- 
mote,” or “ Six Acre Field,” and is also shown on old 
maps as 44 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, 
44 Highbury Terrace, 1789,” and this, according to old 
guide-books, 44 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 44 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 
