Newington Green

We don't usually think much about the small greens that dot the London landscape, but today we walked through nearby Newington Green and learned a lot in the process. Apparently, there is a bomb shelter under the green which saw use during WWII.

The Unitarian Church that looks onto the green was built in 1708,

and is perhaps best known as being the the congregation of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the early feminist work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792. Wollstonescraft's husband was a minister at the church, which is continuing its dissenting ways by announcing earlier this month that it would stop performing wedding ceremonies at the church until same-sex couples were granted the same religious marriage rights as opposite-sex couples.

Back in 1480, Newington Green was a village within a Middlesex Forest clearing, counting wild boar amongst its neighbours!

Nine schools have been located on the green in its last 450 years, including a girls' school run by Mary Wallstonecraft from 1784-85.

One such primary school still exists here, directly across from the abacus plaque:

Where do you think the oldest housing terrace in London is located? Well, if you guessed The City, guess again, because that honour goes to a humble brick terrace of four houses right on Newington Green, dating to 1658.

Although shopfronts were added to the buildings in the late 1800s, three of these shopfronts have since been removed, allowing the terrace to take on more of its original appearance.

The final treasure we found today is a representation of a ring belonging to Henry VIII that was found in a nearby field in 1790. Henry VIII kept two houses on the green: a hunting lodge and a home for his concubines.

According to a sign on the green, there are five other plaques that we didn't find today, but we decided to end our neighbourhood history-gathering and head down to the greengrocer's where we had been heading when we cut across the green, only to be sidetracked by history. The sign also mentioned that "early muppet puppets [were] made at the green" in the 1970s, but I couldn't find any further information about this. All in all, not a bad variety of historical tidbits for one small part of our neighbourhood, huh?