Highbury Barn Tavern with its gardens is, like the Canonbury House Tavern and gardens, rooted in a respectable antiquity, for it stood on the site of Highbury Barn[172] which formed part of the farm attached to the old country seat[173] of the Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
Highbury Barn (the tavern) was originally a small cake and ale house which was in existence at least as early as 1740[174]. It was occasionally (about 1768) honoured by a visit from Oliver Goldsmith on one of his Shoemaker’s holidays. Goldsmith and three or four of his friends would leave his Temple chambers in the morning and proceed by the City Road and through the fields to Highbury Barn, where at one o’clock they enjoyed a dinner of two courses and pastry, at the cost of tenpence a head including the waiter’s penny. The company then to be met with at the inn consisted of Templars and literary men, and a citizen or two retired from business. At about six, Goldsmith and his party adjourned to the White Conduit House for tea, and ended the day with supper at the Globe or Grecian.
The trade of the place greatly increased under the management of Mr. Willoughby, who, dying in December 1785, was succeeded by his son. The younger Willoughby (landlord 1785–1818?)[175] laid out the gardens, bowling green and trap-ball ground.[176] A large barn belonging to the neighbouring Highbury Farm (or Grange) was incorporated with the premises and fitted up suitably for a Great Room. Here a monthly assembly subscribed to in the neighbourhood was held in the spring and winter and monster dinner-parties of clubs and societies were accommodated. In 1800 a company of eight hundred persons sat down to dinner, and seventy geese were to be seen roasting on the fire. Three thousand people were accommodated at the Licensed Victuallers’ Dinner in 1841.
About 1793 the garden commanded an extensive prospect, and as late as 1842 Highbury could be described as “a beautifully situated hamlet.”
HIGHBURY BARN IN 1792.
In 1818 the property was purchased by the former proprietor of the Grove House, Camberwell, and Highbury Barn was much resorted to as a Sunday tea-garden (circ. 1823–1830). The place then passed (before 1835) into the hands of John Hinton (previously landlord of the Eyre Arms, St. John’s Wood) who with his son Archibald Hinton, ultimately the sole proprietor, gave new life to the place and made Highbury Barn a kind of North London Cremorne. By about 1854 the number of monster dinner-parties and bean-feasts had much fallen off, and on Whit-Monday of that year Hinton opened his establishment for musical entertainments with a performance by the band of the Grenadier Guards.
A license for dancing was granted in October 1856, and in July 1858 a Leviathan dancing platform, with an orchestra at one end, was erected in the grounds. It was open to the sky with the exception of one side, which consisted of a roofed structure of ornamental ironwork. The whole platform occupied four thousand feet. A standard of gas lamps in the centre of the platform and lamps placed round its railing lit up the place in the evening, when the gardens were frequented by large masses of people. In a more secluded part of the gardens was an avenue of trees, flanked by female statues, each holding a globular gas lamp. About 1858 the admission was sixpence, and at this time Highbury Barn was much frequented on Sunday evenings, when little parties might be seen on the lawn before the Barn or in the bowers and alcoves by its side. The gardens occupied five acres.
Archibald Hinton gave up possession in 1860; and in 1861 Edward Giovanelli opened Highbury Barn, after having improved the grounds and erected a spacious hall for a ball and supper room. In 1862 Miss Rebecca Isaacs and Vernon Rigby were the principal singers, and Leotard the gymnast was engaged for the summer season. On 20 May 1865 the Alexandra Theatre was opened in the grounds, but the entertainments in the gardens were also continued. “The splendid Illuminations” were boldly advertised, and Blondin (1868), Natator the man-frog, and the Siamese Twins were engaged (1869). The riotous behaviour, late at night, of many frequenters of the gardens caused annoyance to the neighbours, who regularly opposed the renewal of the license. In October 1870 the dancing license was refused, and next season Mr. E. T. Smith took the place of Giovanelli as manager, but the license being again refused in October 1871, Highbury Barn was finally closed. The flowerbeds became choked with grass and weeds, and nightshade luxuriated around the dismantled orchestra. By the spring of 1883 the place had been covered with buildings, and a large public-house, the Highbury Tavern (No. 26, Highbury Park N.), on part of the old site, alone commemorates this once popular resort.
[Nelson’s Islington; Cromwell’s Islington; Lewis’s Islington; Tomlins’s Perambulation of Islington; Kearsley’s Strangers’ Guide; Walford, ii. 273. ff.; Forster’s Life of Goldsmith, bk. iv. chap. 2; Picture of London, 1802, 1823 and 1829; Ritchie’s Night-side of London (1858); Era Almanack, 1871, pp. 3, 4; M. Williams’s Some London Theatres, 1883, p. 33, ff.; newspaper cuttings and bills, W. Coll.]