Details
ISLINGTON
TQ3284NW CANONBURY PLACE
635-1/47/167 (East side)
20/09/54 Nos.6-9 (Consecutive)
(Formerly Listed as:
CANONBURY PLACE
No.6)
(Formerly Listed as:
CANONBURY PLACE
No.7)
(Formerly Listed as:
CANONBURY PLACE
Nos.8 & 9)
GV II*
Terraced houses. Probably on the site of and incorporating
parts of the central range of Sir John Spencer's late Cl6
manor house. The row now consists of two units only: nos 6-7,
a house, and nos 8-9, now Canonbury Children's Day Care
Centre. Nos 6-7 have some internal features similar to nos 1-5
(q.v.), built by John Dawes c.1771; and there are early C19
alterations. Brick, stucco and roofs of slate. The former no 6
presents a separate appearance to Canonbury Place: three
storeys, two bays, flat-arched recessed sash windows to ground
and first floors, round-arched above. Original glazing bars to
ground and first floors. Entrance with architrave, panelled
door, deep overlight and deep cornice on consoles. Cornice
below second floor sills from which four simple pilasters run
up to the parapet. Return to no 7 stuccoed with expressed
stack. South elevation: early C18; yellow brick with red brick
dressings; two storeys plus dormers, six-window range, the
windows with flat arches of gauged brick; single-storey bay,
two windows wide, and probably of C19 date, to west end, one
lead rainwater-head of late C18 date. Band between ground and
first floors and above first floor; plain red brick pilasters
to either end of elevation; parapet. Rear elevation, facing
onto Alwyne Place, has stretches of plum-coloured brick in
English bond, and one casement window, facing north, possibly
of C16 date.
The former no 7 consists of the four southern bays of the main
north-south range of buildings, and nos 8-9 make up the rest.
Three storeys; one part to the south, under three large
contiguous gables, appears to be of the C18 and has five bays
of flat-arched recessed windows with sashes to the ground and
first floors, some original, and casements in the gables; at
north end of this part, a battlemented porch with
pointed-arched windows to either side, diagonal buttresses and
front entrance now blocked. The part to the north, which looks
early C19, has scattered flat-arched windows with casements,
flat-arched entrance and, at the north end, a semi-circular,
embattled, single-storey bay with drip-moulds over the three
windows. The rear elevations of nos 7-9, facing Alwyne Place,
have a three-storey stuccoed bay towards the south with
dripmoulds and blank panelling in the Tudor style and a
truncated gable, and a two-storey wing to the north with two
large and one small roof dormers.
INTERIOR: of nos 6-7: entrance hall with two elaborately
moulded round arches facing the entrance, the right-hand one
blank. The staircase from the entrance hall has a curtail
step, wreathed and ramped handrail, stick balusters and an
open string decorated with scrolling ornament as in nos 1-5.
On the ground floor there is a small cross-vaulted lobby with
doors having early C19 architraves; the south-east room has a
chimneypiece partly of c.1600: fireplace surround with eared
architrave flanked by panelled tapering pilasters, Adam
details to the frieze and dentil cornice to the mantelshelf
which breaks forward over the pilasters; paired columns either
side of the overmantel flanking a moulded panel and supporting
an architrave with fluted brackets, fluted panels and dentil
cornice; the upper architrave matches one at Compton Wynyates,
Warwickshire. In the room north of the staircase hall there is
a Tudor-arched doorway in the east wall with two
roll-mouldings to the architrave and carved detail including
Prior Bolton's rebus in the spandrels; the door has 3 x 3
moulded panels; the architrave of a higher doorway of similar
date is partly preserved next to it, and both were installed
here in the 1950s. The north-west room on the ground floor has
a C19 marble fireplace with cast-iron grate, and a moulded
plaster cornice. The rear staircase has a curtail step,
wreathed and ramped handrail, and turned balusters on the
ground and first floors.
The principal room at the north end of the first floor has a
decorative plaster ceiling dated 1599 decorated with a royal
coat of arms and date in the central panel, and figures of
Tarquin, Aegeria and Julius Caesar, and with other classical
figures in the subsidiary panels; the strapwork is decorated
with scrolling flowers and the intervening spaces with sprays
of flowers. The crispness of the modelling and the character
of the timberwork in the roof above it cast a little doubt on
the date of this ceiling. The north-west room on the first
floor has a few timbers stencilled to give the effect of
panelling c.1600, and the same detail can be seen in the
central east room on the second floor. The south-east room on
the first floor has full fielded panelling and an elaborate
cornice.
INTERIOR: of nos 8-9: three door surrounds to ground floor of
late C18 or early C19; staircase from ground to first floor
has turned newels, stick balusters, moulded and ramped
handrail and open string; from the first to second floor it is
possibly of C16 date, with square corniced newel posts, closed
string, vase balusters and moulded handrail. On the ground
floor, east side, late C16 plaster ceiling with coved cornice,
the design consisting of circles overlaid with other circles
and quatrefoils, the ribs decorated with meandering foliage
and the points of junction and intersection decorated with
large and small pendants; the spandrels decorated with
stylised foliage. Over this room, on the first floor, a
similar ceiling with foliage ribs in circles, squares and
chamfered rectangles, the spaced filled with emblems, figures
of heroes and foliage sprays, one panel having the date 1599.
To the west side, a smaller room with a ceiling of similar
date, the foliage ribs in a pattern of lozenges, segments and
squares, with emblems and sprays; this ceiling now incomplete.
(Country Life 1926, vol. 59, pp.630-8.).
Listing NGR: TQ3201284521
