Clerkenwell Green may be covered in tarmac and concrete, but it still has the feel and spirit – and the lack of bustle – of a quintessential English village green. Clerkenwell Green has long been regarded as the heart and centre of Clerkenwell from which the rest of Clerkenwell must have grown outwards. But in fact it was the opposite. First, there were the estates of the two mediaeval monastic houses which partitioned most of Clerkenwell between them in the 12th century. These were the Order of St John of Jerusalem with its Hospitaller knights to the south and the nunnery of St Mary to the north. Clerkenwell Green seems to have developed in a space between them as an available place for the public and for people with business with the two rich religious foundations.
The development of Clerkenwell itself took the form of ribbon developments along roads leading to or running next to the monasteries, and also roads mainly from the north leading to the livestock markets of Smithfield. These roads attracted businesses, particularly inns to service visitors.
The first recorded reference to Clerkenwell Green by that name was in the 1580s
The numbering of buildings in Clerkenwell Green starts on the south side near Aylesbury Street. No. 1 Clerkenwell Green, which was built in 1986, is a six-storey block with a red-brick façade.
Nos. 2 – 7 Clerkenwell Green appear to be a single development. In a sense, they are: they were all designed by the same are architects, in the same distinctive style with plum-coloured bricks, but they were built in two phases several years apart. Nos 2–4 Clerkenwell Green were built in 1970 and Nos. 5–7 in 1974.
The most interesting modern buildings are often the ones architects build for themselves. Nos 8 and 9 Clerkenwell Green certainly qualify. The architects were a husband-and-wife team called Paxton Locher Architects, and they were not only building an office and apartment block (No. 8), but also a home for themselves (No. 9). The buildings were constructed in 1997 on the site of a former printing works. No. 8 is a six-storey, steel-framed and glass fronted office and apartment building. The architects’ home was concealed behind. It was reached via a long passageway through No. 8, and then by a timber bridge over an indoor pool. The principal living area is in the form of an atrium, with other rooms grouped around it at ground level, or, in the case of bedrooms, on galleries above. There was a glazed bridge to connect the different parts, and a roof-terrace. The building had no windows, so the light needed to come entirely through a retractable roof of stainless steel and glass. It sounds great. I wonder how well the secondary rooms work in practice.
The buildings which make up Nos. 10 to 15 Clerkenwell Green were built by the same Holloway builder, Thomas Channing, in 1878, and for a while were named ‘Channing’s Buildings’. They were originally a row of separate warehouses.
Channing was quite generous with his decorative features for Nos 12–14 Clerkenwell Green. They have large shaped gables and dormers. The windows are quite elaborate and use red brick, terracotta and stone. This may have been intended to draw attention away from the basic brickwork used for the building.
Nos 15–17 Clerkenwell Green are guilty of the crime which, in architects’ eyes, should condemn the perpetrator to the innermost circle of Hell. Pastiche. The present Nos 15–17 may look like original 18th century houses, but they were built in 1986. Admittedly, the new buildings were an attempt at replacing the 18th century houses which had stood there.
The original houses which were also three storeys high, with attics, were built in 1706 as a marriage gift by the bride’s father. Either as a result of wartime bombing or general neglect, only the ground floors were left standing after the War. An effort was made to patch them up with new first floors in 1958, but that was not successful. So the whole lot was demolished and the new buildings erected in 1986. Apparently, in an effort to suggest it was a matter of repair rather than rebuilding, some wooden columns from a door surround and parts of a shop front were incorporated in the façades.
No. 18 Clerkenwell Green is a modern office building, but I have no detailed information about its construction.
This building, on the corner with Clerkenwell Road, known as ‘Cornwell House’, marks the end of this southern side of Clerkenwell Green. It was originally ‘the Sessions House Hotel’, in fact, both a pub and a hotel.
The Middlesex Sessions House occupies the whole of the west side of Clerkenwell Green.
The North side of Clerkenwell Green starts near Farringdon Lane. The former pub on the corner is No. 29 Clerkenwell Green. In the history of London, pubs are often repeatedly rebuilt on the same spot. A pub called the French Horn was built here in 1781. It was was renamed the Fox and French Horn by 1796. That building was knocked down in 1867 and a new pub constructed, again called the Fox and French Horn. The pub closed in the 1920s.
Nos 30 – 31 Clerkenwell Green were built in 1912 as a combined home, shop and workshop for a saw manufacturer. It was a cut above his previous premises.
No. 32 Clerkenwell Green – in contrast with Nos 15–17 Clerkenwell Green on opposite side of the green – looks modern but is in fact 18th century. It was built by a baker in 1756. The shop front and the attic storey are modern, and the building was given an entirely modern interior in the 1980s, but the fabric remains 18th century.
The stretch of frontage now occupied by Nos 33–36 Clerkenwell Green was formerly occupied by four 18th-century houses. In the 1950s and early 60s the buildings here and nearby in Clerkenwell Close were mostly in ruins, and they were cleared by the London County Council as part of its scheme to turn Clerkenwell Green and St James’s churchyard into a single open space. This scheme was abandoned in the late 1960s and the land remained undeveloped. But in the 1980s Islington Borough Council began their own mixed use development on the site, including workshops, shops, flats and maisonettes. There were also gardens, pedestrianized courtyards and walkways in the space between. The development was carried out in 1985 using designs by the Council’s Architect’s Department. The design and materials were intended specifically to blend in with the surviving Georgian-looking buildings near by.
No. 37A Clerkenwell Green is famous for its long connections with radical and left-wing causes. Lenin was a regular visitor before the First World War and his Russian-language underground newspaper Iskra was printed in the building. A (small) room is named after him. The Marx Memorial Library was set up in the building in 1933. There is a fresco in the library which was painted in 1935 and which includes well-known socialists and communists.
No. 37A Clerkenwell Green might appear to be just about the oldest building on the Green. It was erected in 1738 as the schoolhouse of the Welsh School. In fact, hardly anything of the 1738 structure survives. The stuccoed ‘Georgian’ façade is a modern facsimile added on in the 1960s in an effort to replicate the 1730s original. The oldest parts of the building – pre-dating the school – are the brick-vaulted cellars which extend beyond the ground level boundaries of the site.
Nos 39 and 40 Clerkenwell Green were built in the early 1740s on behalf of the trustees of adjoining Welsh School (No. 37A). The buildings are original, but they were spoilt in two stages – the facades were replaced with new ugly fronts in 1880, and then these were rendered over in concrete in 1990.
The buildings on the other side of Clerkenwell Close, begin with Nos. 41 and 42 Clerkenwell Green. There is no record of when they were built, but it would have been before 1880. The owner started reconstructing No. 41 Clerkenwell Green in the mid-1970s, but stopped for some reason, and the building was left roofless and windowless for many years. The building was finally made whole again in 1982 as offices and a maisonette linked to No. 42, which was also rebuilt.
The next section of Clerkenwell Green is on the east side of Clerkenwell Close.
A tavern called the Crown has stood on or near the site of Nos. 43 and 44 Clerkenwell Green since at least the 1720s, but the exact position is not known. Nos 43 and 44 Clerkenwell Green and 55 Clerkenwell Close were originally all part of the ‘new’ Crown Tavern. No. 43 Clerkenwell Green and No. 55 Clerkenwell Close date from the 1780s, while No. 44 was built in the 1820s or 30s. The three buildings are all in separate use now, and the Crown Tavern is now confined to No. 43 Clerkenwell Green only.
Clerkenwell House, Nos. 45–47 Clerkenwell Green, was built in 1906, replacing three 18th-century houses . In 1978 the original coping was removed and a mansard was added and there has been comprehensive rebuilding since.
The Buckley Building, No. 49 Clerkenwell Green was formerly Woodbridge House, No. 30 Aylesbury Street, which was constructed in the 1930s on the site of a former indigo factory. The building occupies an island site bounded by Aylesbury Street, Woodbridge Street, Hayward’s Place and Sekforde Street. It comprises lower ground, ground and four upper floors. Given all the competing streets, it is a mystery to me how it got itself numbered in Clerkenwell Green.
