Another magnum opus from Jenny, this time about the Oldfield family who were well known in Islington from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th, especially around the Thornhill Road area. During this time Islington grew rapidly and underwent huge changes so it is interesting to view the period through the lens of an extensive and prominent family who adapted to these changes and flourished as a result. The Oldfields were not the most properous cow keepers in Islington - Rhodes and Laycock were bigger names - but they were certainly fairly prosperous and thrived at the centre of the community for over a century.
Download FIVE GENERATIONS OF OLDFIELDS OF ISLINGTON, COWKEEPERS - AND MORE
Situated on high ground at the end of what became the A1, Islington has always been an important transport hub for London and by the end of the 1700s was established as the last important staging post for the movement of cattle from the North of England and from Wales, where typically they were fattened up before a last journey down to Smithfield! Various cattle-related businesses had grown up around this practice, including farming, stockholding and dairies. Concurrently, several large coaching inns were established around the Angel and at the same time a number of famous spas were opened where Londoners could take advantage of Islington's relatively pure air, its springs and of course its fresh milk. By the end of the 1800s the area had a reputation not just for cattle but also as an entertainment venue with an abundance of pubs, tea rooms, music halls and the like. The Oldfields were involved in most of these activities.
The first Thomas Oldfield appears, possibly from Halifax, and takes up residence in "The Cricket Fields, Thornhill Road". This refers to the fields around what is now the Albion pub. Thereafter, four more generations of Oldfields, confusingly all known as Thomas Albion Oldfield, lived in the same area. We do not know whether the Albion took its name from these Oldfields or vice versa, but we do know that they developed the building first as a dairy, then tea room and eventually as an inn. Of course the family also figured prominently in all the cattle-related activities of the time. By the mid 1800s most of the Oldfields appear to have migrated to the South coast (Brighton, Hastings and Bognor Regis) as a new middle class moved into the late Georgian housing created by the building boom of the early 1800s and Islington later began its next era of slow decline (see for example "A House Through Time", here - and note the increasingly transient nature of the population compared to the Oldfields' time).
The family's presence is documented in the form of innumerable references in property records, censuses, parish records, wills, court proceedings and the like, all painstakingly recorded by Jenny. We particularly recommend a blow by blow account of Thomas Oldfield being accosted by a soldier on a path over the "Bowling Fields" opposite the Albion! What emerges is a fascinating glimpse of the life of a well-to-do family within Islington during the century when it metamorphosed from a village on the main route into London into a busy and vibrant part of North London itself.
